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More Mumbai Links to Pakistan and Signs of Hostage Abuse
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan Fresh evidence unearthed Thursday by investigators in India indicated that the Mumbai attacks were stage-managed from at least two Pakistani cities by top leaders of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Indian and American intelligence officials have already identified a Lashkar operative, who goes by the name Yusuf Muzammil, as a mastermind of the attacks. On Thursday, Indian investigators named one of the most well-known senior figures in Lashkar, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.
The names of both men came from the interrogations of the one surviving attacker, Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, 21, according to police officials in Mumbai.
While Mr. Muzammil appears to have served as a control officer in Lahore, Pakistan, Mr. Lakhvi, his boss and the operational commander of Lashkar, worked from Karachi, a southern Pakistani port city, said investigators in Mumbai.
It now appears that both men were in contact with their charges as they sailed to Mumbai from Karachi, and then continued guiding the attacks even as they unfolded, directing the assaults and possibly providing information about the police and military response in India.
Some of the calls appeared to be conversations about who would live and who would die among the gunmens hostages, according to an official who interviewed survivors and a report by security consultants with contacts among the investigators.
While Indian officials have pointed a finger directly at Pakistani elements, terrorism experts and some Western officials warned that the emerging sketch of the plotters was still preliminary and could broaden even to include militants within India. India, too, has a long history of antagonism with Pakistan.
The new links emerged as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met in Islamabad with Pakistani leaders, a day after meeting with Indian leaders, to urge that the two countries work together to find the attackers commanders and bring them to justice.
What I heard was a commitment that this is the course that will be taken, Ms. Rice told reporters at Chaklala Air Base in Pakistan after meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.
But while Pakistans leaders offered polite assurances, they made no public announcement of concrete measures to be taken against Lashkar. They have also continued to express skepticism of Pakistani involvement and have resisted handing over 20 suspects demanded by India.
Lashkar-e-Taiba, whose name means army of the pure, was founded with the help of Pakistani intelligence officers more than 20 years ago as a proxy force to challenge Indian control of Muslim-dominated Kashmir.
Since then, the group has broadened its ambitions, its reach and its contacts with an international network of jihadi groups. Its fighters have turned up in Afghanistan and Iraq and have been blamed for several other high-profile attacks in India before.
Today it is technically banned in Pakistan but operates openly through affiliates. Its links to Al Qaeda remain murky, as does the extent of its current ties to Pakistans main spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.
In an interview this week, Muhammad Yahya Mujahid, a spokesman for Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a parent organization of Lashkar, denied that Lashkar or its leader, Haffiz Muhammad Saeed, had any connection to the attack. The surviving gunman in Mumbai claimed to have met Mr. Saeed at a training camp in Pakistan.
American counterterrorism officials said there was no clear evidence that the Pakistani intelligence service played a role in the Mumbai attacks, or that Pakistani operatives were linked to the attackers.
Deven Barthi, a deputy commissioner on the Mumbai police force, would not comment on Indian media reports claiming direct links between the ISI and the Mumbai attacks.
But, he said, we have certain evidence of government complicity that we are trying to verify.
The weapons used in the attacks, he said, came from a factory based in Punjab Province in Pakistan that is under contract to the Pakistani military, he said.
The factory was also the source of grenades and explosives used in several earlier terrorist attacks in India, Mr. Barthi said. Those included bombings in Mumbai in 1993; a suicide attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001 and the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in July, he said.
Investigators discovered the link to the Pakistan factory, Mr. Barthi said, after recovering a grenade left by the attackers that had EN ARGES printed on it.
That corresponds to a brand name belonging to a German company that granted a license to the factory to make weapons for the Pakistani military.
One possible collaborator in the plot, the authorities say, was an Indian named Faheem Ahmed Ansari, who was arrested in February in a northern Indian state, Uttar Pradesh, along with two other suspected Lashkar members.
Mr. Ansari told the police interrogators that from fall 2007 to February 2008 he surveyed possible targets for Lashkar in Mumbai, including the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the old Victoria rail station.
The Uttar Pradesh police said he was arrested in connection with a gun and grenade attack on New Years Eve on a police camp in Rampur when he returned to pick up weapons left behind. His intention was to take the weapons to Mumbai for use in a later operation, they said.
Other evidence emerged Thursday highlighting the sophistication and cruelty of the attacks.
Some of the six people killed at the Jewish center in the city had been treated particularly savagely, the police said, with bodies bearing what appeared to be strangulation marks and other wounds that did not come from gunshots or grenades.
Even before the attackers landed on Mumbais shores, Mr. Lakhvi, the Lashkar commander, who is normally based in Kashmir, helped organize the plot from Karachi for the last three months, said a Pakistani official in contact with Lashkar.
The gunmen also kept in contact with their handlers in Pakistan with cellphones as they rounded up guests at the two hotels, officials say.
The attackers left a trail of evidence in a satellite phone they left behind on the fishing trawler they hijacked near Karachi at the start of their 500-mile journey to Mumbai.
The phone contained the telephone numbers of Mr. Muzammil, Mr. Lakhvi and a number of other Lashkar operatives, according to a report on the Mumbai siege released Thursday by M. J. Gohel and Sajjan M. Gohel, two security analysts who direct the Asia-Pacific Foundation in London.
The numbers dialed on the phone found on the trawler used to call Mr. Muzammil matched the numbers on the cellphones recovered from the Taj and Oberoi hotels, the report said.
Based on evidence found on the trawler, it was possible that five other men were involved in the plot and were still at large, the report said.
In one of the hotels, a gunman asked several Indian guests what caste they belonged to and what state they came from, said an official who interviewed the guests.
Once the attacker found out these details, he then called someone believed to be Mr. Muzammil, who was also identified by the surviving gunman and who was in Lahore, according to phone records recovered by investigators.
The surviving guests said the attacker told the person on the other end of the phone the guests details and asked whether they should be killed or not.
At one point, a guest said one of the calls seemed to be a conference call with two people on the other end.
Once the calls were finished, the attacker moved the small group of guests, who did not know what their fate would be, into a room. When the attackers became distracted by tear gas fired by the police, the hostages managed to escape.
In another instance, the gunmen forced a Singaporean hostage at the Oberoi hotel, Lo Hwei Yen, to call her husband in Singapore. She told him that the hostages were demanding that Singaporean officials tell India not to try a rescue operation. The next day, Ms. Lo was killed, the foundations report said.
Investigators found that after the gunmen killed her, they used the phone she had called her husband with, the report said.
The worrying scenario is that Muzammil may have ordered her execution along with two other hostages that were found murdered in the same room, the report said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/world/asia/05mumbai.html?_r=1&hp
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan Fresh evidence unearthed Thursday by investigators in India indicated that the Mumbai attacks were stage-managed from at least two Pakistani cities by top leaders of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Indian and American intelligence officials have already identified a Lashkar operative, who goes by the name Yusuf Muzammil, as a mastermind of the attacks. On Thursday, Indian investigators named one of the most well-known senior figures in Lashkar, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.
The names of both men came from the interrogations of the one surviving attacker, Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, 21, according to police officials in Mumbai.
While Mr. Muzammil appears to have served as a control officer in Lahore, Pakistan, Mr. Lakhvi, his boss and the operational commander of Lashkar, worked from Karachi, a southern Pakistani port city, said investigators in Mumbai.
It now appears that both men were in contact with their charges as they sailed to Mumbai from Karachi, and then continued guiding the attacks even as they unfolded, directing the assaults and possibly providing information about the police and military response in India.
Some of the calls appeared to be conversations about who would live and who would die among the gunmens hostages, according to an official who interviewed survivors and a report by security consultants with contacts among the investigators.
While Indian officials have pointed a finger directly at Pakistani elements, terrorism experts and some Western officials warned that the emerging sketch of the plotters was still preliminary and could broaden even to include militants within India. India, too, has a long history of antagonism with Pakistan.
The new links emerged as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met in Islamabad with Pakistani leaders, a day after meeting with Indian leaders, to urge that the two countries work together to find the attackers commanders and bring them to justice.
What I heard was a commitment that this is the course that will be taken, Ms. Rice told reporters at Chaklala Air Base in Pakistan after meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.
But while Pakistans leaders offered polite assurances, they made no public announcement of concrete measures to be taken against Lashkar. They have also continued to express skepticism of Pakistani involvement and have resisted handing over 20 suspects demanded by India.
Lashkar-e-Taiba, whose name means army of the pure, was founded with the help of Pakistani intelligence officers more than 20 years ago as a proxy force to challenge Indian control of Muslim-dominated Kashmir.
Since then, the group has broadened its ambitions, its reach and its contacts with an international network of jihadi groups. Its fighters have turned up in Afghanistan and Iraq and have been blamed for several other high-profile attacks in India before.
Today it is technically banned in Pakistan but operates openly through affiliates. Its links to Al Qaeda remain murky, as does the extent of its current ties to Pakistans main spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.
In an interview this week, Muhammad Yahya Mujahid, a spokesman for Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a parent organization of Lashkar, denied that Lashkar or its leader, Haffiz Muhammad Saeed, had any connection to the attack. The surviving gunman in Mumbai claimed to have met Mr. Saeed at a training camp in Pakistan.
American counterterrorism officials said there was no clear evidence that the Pakistani intelligence service played a role in the Mumbai attacks, or that Pakistani operatives were linked to the attackers.
Deven Barthi, a deputy commissioner on the Mumbai police force, would not comment on Indian media reports claiming direct links between the ISI and the Mumbai attacks.
But, he said, we have certain evidence of government complicity that we are trying to verify.
The weapons used in the attacks, he said, came from a factory based in Punjab Province in Pakistan that is under contract to the Pakistani military, he said.
The factory was also the source of grenades and explosives used in several earlier terrorist attacks in India, Mr. Barthi said. Those included bombings in Mumbai in 1993; a suicide attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001 and the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in July, he said.
Investigators discovered the link to the Pakistan factory, Mr. Barthi said, after recovering a grenade left by the attackers that had EN ARGES printed on it.
That corresponds to a brand name belonging to a German company that granted a license to the factory to make weapons for the Pakistani military.
One possible collaborator in the plot, the authorities say, was an Indian named Faheem Ahmed Ansari, who was arrested in February in a northern Indian state, Uttar Pradesh, along with two other suspected Lashkar members.
Mr. Ansari told the police interrogators that from fall 2007 to February 2008 he surveyed possible targets for Lashkar in Mumbai, including the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the old Victoria rail station.
The Uttar Pradesh police said he was arrested in connection with a gun and grenade attack on New Years Eve on a police camp in Rampur when he returned to pick up weapons left behind. His intention was to take the weapons to Mumbai for use in a later operation, they said.
Other evidence emerged Thursday highlighting the sophistication and cruelty of the attacks.
Some of the six people killed at the Jewish center in the city had been treated particularly savagely, the police said, with bodies bearing what appeared to be strangulation marks and other wounds that did not come from gunshots or grenades.
Even before the attackers landed on Mumbais shores, Mr. Lakhvi, the Lashkar commander, who is normally based in Kashmir, helped organize the plot from Karachi for the last three months, said a Pakistani official in contact with Lashkar.
The gunmen also kept in contact with their handlers in Pakistan with cellphones as they rounded up guests at the two hotels, officials say.
The attackers left a trail of evidence in a satellite phone they left behind on the fishing trawler they hijacked near Karachi at the start of their 500-mile journey to Mumbai.
The phone contained the telephone numbers of Mr. Muzammil, Mr. Lakhvi and a number of other Lashkar operatives, according to a report on the Mumbai siege released Thursday by M. J. Gohel and Sajjan M. Gohel, two security analysts who direct the Asia-Pacific Foundation in London.
The numbers dialed on the phone found on the trawler used to call Mr. Muzammil matched the numbers on the cellphones recovered from the Taj and Oberoi hotels, the report said.
Based on evidence found on the trawler, it was possible that five other men were involved in the plot and were still at large, the report said.
In one of the hotels, a gunman asked several Indian guests what caste they belonged to and what state they came from, said an official who interviewed the guests.
Once the attacker found out these details, he then called someone believed to be Mr. Muzammil, who was also identified by the surviving gunman and who was in Lahore, according to phone records recovered by investigators.
The surviving guests said the attacker told the person on the other end of the phone the guests details and asked whether they should be killed or not.
At one point, a guest said one of the calls seemed to be a conference call with two people on the other end.
Once the calls were finished, the attacker moved the small group of guests, who did not know what their fate would be, into a room. When the attackers became distracted by tear gas fired by the police, the hostages managed to escape.
In another instance, the gunmen forced a Singaporean hostage at the Oberoi hotel, Lo Hwei Yen, to call her husband in Singapore. She told him that the hostages were demanding that Singaporean officials tell India not to try a rescue operation. The next day, Ms. Lo was killed, the foundations report said.
Investigators found that after the gunmen killed her, they used the phone she had called her husband with, the report said.
The worrying scenario is that Muzammil may have ordered her execution along with two other hostages that were found murdered in the same room, the report said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/world/asia/05mumbai.html?_r=1&hp
is the sacred Hindu thread also called 'mauli' in hindi. It is worn while performing Hindu rituals like Yajna or Puja. It is tied by a priest on the wrists of all the people attending the prayer ceremony. Kalava is tied on right hand of males and unmarried females, and on left hand of married females. Sometimes it has small yellow parts in between the mostly red string. It sometimes has knots which are tied up while reciting Sanskritmantras to invoke God and is worn to ward off evil from the person who wears this red thread.
