French Investigator: LeT is now a part of Al Qaeda-led syndicate

[TalibanSwatter]

Reuters

PARIS: Former French investigating magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere, author of a new book has provided rare insight both into alleged past army support for the Lashkar-e-Taiba and to the group's connections to a global network linked to al Qaeda.

Bruguiere bases the information in his book on international terrorism, 'Ce que je n'ai pas pu dire' ('What I could not say') on testimony given by jailed Frenchman Willy Brigitte, who spent 2-1/2 months in a Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp in 2001/2002.

In an interview, Bruguiere said he was convinced Lashkar-e-Taiba, first set up to fight India in its part of the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir, had become part of an international network tied to al Qaeda.

'Lashkar-e-Taiba is no longer a Pakistani movement with only a Kashmir political or military agenda. Lashkar-e-Taiba is a member of al Qaeda. Lashkar-e-Taiba has decided to expand violence worldwide,' he told Reuters.

He was 'very, very anxious about the situation' in Pakistan, where militants are staging a series of bloody urban attacks to avenge a government offensive against their strongholds.

Pakistan has suffered numerous terror attacks this year, which have killed hundreds and displaced thousands in the country.

'The problem right now is to know if the Pakistanis have sufficient power to control the situation,' he said.

NEW FORM OF TERRORISM

Bruguiere said he became aware of the changing nature of international terrorism while investigating attacks in Paris in the mid-1990s by the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA).

These included an attempt to hijack a plane from Algiers to Paris in 1994 and crash it into the Eiffel Tower - a forerunner of the Sept. 11 2001 attacks. The plane was diverted to Marseilles and stormed by French security forces.

This new style of international terrorism was quite unlike militant groups he had investigated in the past, with their pyramidal structures and political objectives.

'After 1994/1995, like viruses, all the groups have been spreading on a very large scale all over the world, in a horizontal way and even a random way,' he said.

An early encounter with Lashkar-e-Taiba came while he was investigating shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who tried to set off explosives on a transatlantic flight from Paris in 2001.

This investigation led to a man, who Bruguiere said was the Lashkar-e-Taiba's representative in Paris, and who was suspected of helping Reid - an accusation he denied. Bruguiere said the link to Reid was not proved in court.

Brigitte, a Frenchman originally from France's Caribbean department of Guadeloupe, had gone to Pakistan shortly after Sept. 11 to try to reach Afghanistan. Unable to make it, he had been sent to a Lashkar centre outside Lahore. A man named Sajid Mir became his handler.

'He quickly understood that Sajid belonged to the regular Pakistan army,' wrote Bruguiere.

After 1-1/2 months, he was taken with four other trainees, two British and two Americans, to a Lashkar camp in the hills in Punjab province. The Toyota pick-up which took them there passed through four army check-points without being stopped.

During his 2-1/2 month stay at the camp, Bruguiere says, Brigitte realised the instructors were soldiers on detachment. Military supplies were dropped by army helicopters.

Brigitte said he and other foreigners were forced four times to leave the camp and move further up into the hills to avoid being caught by CIA officers.

'DOUBLE STANDARDS'

Western countries were at the time accused by India of double standards in tolerating Pakistani support for Kashmir-focused organisations while pushing it to crack down on militant groups which threatened Western interests.

Diplomats say that attitude has since changed, particularly after bombings in London in 2005 highlighted the risks of 'home-grown terrorism' in Britain linked to militant groups based in Pakistan's Punjab province.

After leaving the camp accompanied by Sajid, Brigitte was sent back to France.

Sajid then ordered him to fly to Australia where he joined a cell later accused of plotting attacks there. Tipped off by French police, Brigitte was deported from Australia in 2003 and convicted by a French court of links to terrorism.

Bruguiere said he had personally questioned Brigitte in the presence of his lawyer to check his testimony. Information provided by Brigitte was also cross-checked by French police based on mobile phone and e-mail traffic.

Bruguiere went to Pakistan himself in 2006 as part of his investigations into the deaths of 11 Frenchmen in a bombing outside a hotel in Karachi in 2002.

He stepped down as France's best-known counter-terrorism expert in 2007 and now represents the EU on the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program in Washington.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

Origins of LeT

CFR

Lashkar-e-Taiba, meaning "army of the pure" has been active since 1993. It is the military wing of the well-funded Pakistani Islamist organization Markaz-ad-Dawa-wal-Irshad, which was founded in 1989 and recruited volunteers to fight alongside the Taliban. During the 1990s, experts say LeT received instruction and funding from Pakistan's intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), in exchange for a pledge to target Hindus in Jammu and Kashmir and to train Muslim extremists on Indian soil. Pakistan's government has repeatedly denied allegations of supporting terrorism.

Until it was banned in Pakistan in 2002, LeT claimed responsibility for numerous attacks, including an attack on the army barracks at Delhi's Red Fort in 2000, killing three people; a January 2001 attack on Srinagar airport that killed five Indians; and an attack in April 2002 against Indian border security forces that left at least four dead. But after being outlawed, it has not admitted to attacks. It denied responsibility for the November 2008 attack in Mumbai, the July 2006 attack on the Mumbai commuter rail, and the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament, despite the Indian government's allegations.

Husain Haqqani, now Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, wrote about jihadist groups in a 2005 essay while he was a visiting scholar at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In the essay, he said: "The most significant jihadi group of Wahhabi/Salafi persuasion[influenced by the doctrine of 18th-century Islamic scholar Muhammad ibn-Abdul Wahhab] is Lashkar-e-Taiba" which is backed by Saudi money and protected by Pakistani intelligence services. According to South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), a terrorism database on the region, LeT's professed ideology goes beyond merely challenging India's sovereignty over the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The LeT's agenda, as outlined in a pamphlet titled, "Why are we waging jihad," includes the restoration of Islamic rule over all parts of India, it says. The pamphlet also declares the United States, Israel, and India as existential enemies of Islam, writes Haqqani. The portal adds: LeT "seeks to bring about a union of all Muslim majority regions in countries that surround Pakistan." According to Haqqani, LeT justifies its ideology by the Quranic verse that says, "You are obligated to fight even though it is something you do not like" (2:216).

Leadership and Funding
The group has its headquarters in Muridke near Lahore in Pakistan, say experts, and is headed by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, a former Islamic-studies professor. In December 2008, New Delhi demanded that Islamabad hand over Saeed as a suspect wanted for terrorism in India, including the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. SATP says LeT's headquarters complex houses a madrassa (seminary), a hospital, a market, a large residential area for the group's scholars and faculty members, a fish farm, and agricultural tracts. The terrorism portal says the group operates 16 Islamic institutions, 135 secondary schools, an ambulance service, mobile clinics, blood banks, and several seminaries across Pakistan. The U.S. State Department says the actual size of the group is unknown but contends it has several thousand members in the Kashmir region. It says most LeT members are Pakistanis from madrassas across Pakistan and Afghanistan. It also notes the group is alleged to augment its strength through collaboration with terrorist groups comprised of non-Pakistanis. The group uses assault rifles, light and heavy machine guns, mortars, explosives, and rocket-propelled grenades. LeT publishes its views and opinion through its website, an Urdu-language monthly journal, Al-Dawa, and an Urdu weekly, Gazwa. It also publishes several other magazines, including Voice of Islam, an English-language monthly.

According to most sources, the group collects donations from the Pakistani expatriate community in the Persian Gulf and Britain as well as from Islamic NGOs, and Pakistani and Kashmiri businessmen. Experts say it also receives funding from the ISI and Saudi Arabia. LeT also coordinates its charitable activities through its front organization Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JUD), which spearheaded humanitarian relief to the victims of the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

PLN

December 2008

Lashkar-e-Taiba ("Army of the Pure") was founded in Afghanistan's Kunar province in 1990 as the armed wing of "Markaz-ud-Dawa wal-Irshad" (MDI, ("Proselytization and Guidance Center"). Its primary concern was the "liberation" of the Indian part of Kashmir. Later, however, the scope of the jihad (holy war) would be broadened to the "liberation" of the whole of India as well as other parts of Asia, turning these vast areas into an Islamic state. Pakistani intelligence, the Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI, was instrumental in the creation of Lashkar-e-Taiba. The founder was a Pakistani university professor named Hafiz Muhammad Saeed.

Lashkar-e-Taiba and some other Pakistani jihadist organizations (notably "Jaish-e-Mohammed") have close connections to Al-Qaeda. As Muhammad Amir Rana states in his thorough study "A to Z of Jihadi Organizations in Pakistan": "Osama bin Laden has been playing the role of mediator between different jihadi organizations, and Arab mujahideen (=holy warriors) and members of Al-Qaeda have been receiving military training in camps belonging to these organizations in Afghanistan."

There was an important conference in 1999 where Osama bin Laden and several jihadist organizations decided to redouble the efforts to bring about an Islamic government in Kashmir. Kashmir was "to be turned into an alternative base camp for Islamic organizations. After this conference jihadi organizations took it upon themselves to announce a rule of Shariah in Occupied Kashmir and in many areas women were forbidden to come out in public unveiled or wearing western clothes."

Senior Al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah was captured in a LeT safehouse in Faisalabad, Pakistan, in March 2002. Zubaydah was Osama bin Laden's chief of operations. He was responsible for training thousands of Islamic militants in Al-Qaeda training camps. He contacted Al-Qaeda cells in the field when an atttack was being planned. Obviously, important Al-Qaeda operatives were sometimes using safehouses belonging to Lashkar-e-Taiba.

LeT denies it has any links to Al-Qaeda, and there are indeed some differences. Yahya Mujahid, a spokesman for the group claimed that they do not agree with bin Laden's call to overthrow the rulers of Muslim countries. This is not very strange. Calling itself "Jama'at-ud-Dawa" LeT operates as a kind of charity helping Kashmiris in need. They have their own website (jamatuddawa.com). They receive vast amounts of money from Saudi Arabia and some Gulf States. Bin Laden is calling for the overthrow of the rulers of these very Muslim countries, so that call may very well be unwelcome to the JuD/LeT leadership.

In addition, LeT jihadists are fighting in the ranks of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Quite of a number of LeT jihadists were sent to Iraq, joining ranks there with Al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups.

Jama'at-ud-Dawa is anything but a just charity. The organization runs a number of training camps where jihadists and militant Muslims are being trained. Although India has repeatedly requested the Pakistani government to shut down these camps and arrest the LeT leadership, some action by the Pakistani authorities was belatedly taken only after the Mumbai attacks. The two masterminds of the attacks, Muzammil and Lakhvi, were arested. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed is under house arrest. After the UN Security Council declared that Jama'at-ud-Dawa was a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba and subject to UN sanctions (freezing of its assets, travel ban on four of its leaders), Pakistan finally ordered the closure of this so-called charity.28

Amir Kasab, the only surviving Mumbai terrorist, claimed he had been trained in LeT camps at Muzaffarabad, Mansera (Punjab Province), Muridke and Karachi. He claimed he had been trained by Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, whom he described as "a Pakistani ex-soldier." The training took at least one year and was divided up into seven phases. "The first phase was of very hard physical training of three months which included running up to 10 to 15 km. The next three months were for marine training like swimming, surfing, diving and boating in high seas. The rest included arms and ammunition training." Kasab probably also went to Mumbai to case targets as part of a reconnaissance operation and was possibly assisted by Indian locals.

By 2005, some 10,000 mujahideen had been trained in the camps mentioned by Rana. (The total number of trained LeT jihadists is much higher, though.) Apart from Pakistanis, there were Bosnians, British, Chechnyans, Eritreans, Philippinos, Somalis, North and sub-Saharan Africans, Australians Americans and Arabs.

Lashkar-e-Taiba and Pakistan's "Inter-Services Intelligence" (ISI)

One of the reasons why the Pakistani government was so often reluctant to effectively curtail Jama'at-ud-Dawa/Lashkar-e-Taiba activities is the obviously close link between this militant organization and Pakistan's "Inter-Services Intelligence" (ISI) which played an important role in creating LeT.

The ISI is a powerful body, possibly more powerful than the government itself. Even a military man like former president Pervez Musharraf was never able to really bring the ISI under full control. There are several factions within the ISI, there is a group which even sympathizes with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, possibly frustrating Pakistani military operations against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the tribal areas.

On December 8, 2008, Pakistan raided a JuD/LeT camp near Muzaffarabad, arresting Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and Zarar Shah, another high level LeT operative. The raid came three days after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice met Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardawi and won an assurance that he would take "strong action" against those behind the Mumbai atrocity.

A relatively high number of British Muslims received training in jihad camps run by Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). Some of them are involved in fundraising. In March 2006 a British Pakistani named Mohammed Ajmal Khan was sentenced to nine years for fundraising on behalf of local terror groups in Pakistan. He admitted he had previously attended a training camp run by LeT. The judge described Khan as "a terrorist quartermaster for LeT."

Other radicalized British Pakistanis were involved in terrorist attacks. Two of the 7/7 London suicide bombers, Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, were trained in a JeM or LeT camp.

Mohammed Siddique Khan was in touch with both Al-Qaeda and U.S. citizens. As early as February 2003, some intelligence officials referred to him as "a bad guy from England." The terrorist atttacks in London on July 7, 2005, had the full backing of the Al-Qaeda leadership. Khan, an innocent looking "learning mentor" with the children of immigrant families in Leeds, was the leader of the terrorist cell who committed the attacks.

Another JeM terrorist with British nationality was Rashid Rauf. Rauf was killed on Friday November 21, 2008, by a U.S. drone flying over Pakistan's tribal areas. Rauf was married to a sister-in-law of JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar. Rauf is also one of the alleged ringleaders of a foiled 2006 plot to blow up U.S. bound planes leaving British airports. Rauf, a Birmingham baker's boy whose family emigrated from Kashmir to Britain, eventually joined the ranks of Jaish-e-Mohammed and Al-Qaeda. A former Pakistani Interior Minister described Rauf as "an Al-Qaeda operative with linkages in Afghanistan."

 

[hembo]

Well, any organization which is founded for violence, is bound to remain rogue, as it can be seen that L-e-T has outgorwn its original masters and now ready to even bite back.

If even now, people don't understand the importance of shunning violent ways to settle things then I would not hesitate to call them morons. The seeds of violence, no matter sown by whom, will keep coming back, again and again in different forms, to even bite the master's back. I know all over the globe, geo-politics has been dirty, but its time now to change the way it has been handled over the last 100+ year. Specially in view of the violent lessions we are learning in last decade.