Mumbai Terrorist Attack-News stories and timeline

[Prem Kumar]

I think our Government has been remiss in not inviting the Pakistani judicial commission to interview Aziz Burney and Digvijaya Singh, who had proof that 26/11 was an RSS conspiracy. Their inquiry could have ended right there and guilt established.

Their judicial commission is also well within its rights to demand compensation for the Indian judiciary's custodial killing of a key witness during the attack - Ajmal Kasab. With his death, vital evidence has been destroyed and we will never know the truth behind the 26/11 conspiracy.

Supreme Court Justice CK Prasad who upheld Kasab's death sentence, alongwith Kasab's executioner must stand trial in Pakistan for their role in the custodial killing of Kasab & for destruction of evidence

[Vikas]

Some more Chai Biscoot while mothership hopes that this too will fade away like so many other terror attacks.

[ramana]

An after action reprot on Kenya Mall attack. Compare and contrast to 26/11/08 Mumbai attack.

Blame Game over Nairobi Westgate Mall attack in Kenya

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Blame game over Westgate attack (Terrorist attack in Kenya)
Daily Nation ^ | 27 September 2013 | Nation Team

Posted on Friday, September 27, 2013 6:18:07 AM by spetznaz

Rivalry among security agencies and lack of clear command lines badly affected the response to the terrorist attack on the Westgate Mall, the Nation has established.

Jurisdictional differences appear to have extended to blame games among security agencies, as Kenya recovers from its worst terror attack since the 1998 bombing of the Embassy of the United States of America in Nairobi.

Various units of the Kenya Police and the Kenya Defence Forces played key roles in the rescue operation after a band of terrorists linked to Somalia-based Al-Shabaab attacked the shopping mall on Saturday and killed dozens before holding an unknown number hostage inside the up-market complex.

Inquiries by the Nation indicate that a coordinated rescue mission was badly delayed because of disputes between the Kenya Police and KDF officers commanding their units on the ground.

A reconstruction of the rescue mission indicates that a team from the Recce General Service Unit of the Kenya Police early in the rescue operation made its way into the mall and secured most of it, pinning down the terrorists at one end around Nakumatt Supermarket and Barclays Bank.

Rooftop parking

However, the team pulled out after its commander was fatally shot in ‘friendly fire’ following the arrival of a KDF unit.

Also pulling out at the same time was a small group of policemen from various units and armed civilians, who were the first to enter the mall from the rooftop parking and the front entrance and led hundreds of shoppers to safety.

The pullout left a vacuum that apparently allowed the terrorists to regroup and move through the mall slaughtering many captives.

It also allowed the terrorists to deploy heavy-calibre machine guns that they had not used in the earlier shootout.

It took prolonged consultations that also involved State House before President Kenyatta publicly announced that Inspector-General of Police David Kimaiyo was in charge.

However, it was also decided that KDF Special Forces would be the ones to conduct the actual assault on the terrorists, while the GSU and other police units ringed the mall.

The soldiers and their commanders on the ground only answered to KDF chief General Julius Karangi rather than to the police boss, which also complicated the operation. The teams also appeared to have had different aims. One officer involved said that some units had a priority to locate and rescue a specific group of VIPs.

Barely an hour after the attack, the GSU squad had taken control of almost 70 per cent of the building after moving in to reinforce the small group of policemen, who were the first to enter the building.

The KDF Special Forces came in later to spearhead the operation, with the GSU forming the second inner cordon in the mall behind the army units from the 20 Para Battalion and Maroon Commandos.

The rivalry is understood to have extended to communication on how the public would be informed of the progress of the operation.

As Parliament promised to demand answers from all units involved, it also emerged on Wednesday that the police had been given advance intelligence on the planned terrorist attack, but failed to act.

The Parliamentary Defence Committee Thursday summoned all security chiefs — including National Intelligence Service boss Michael Gichangi—to appear before it next week. The sessions are expected to be dominated by buck-passing.

“The time for responsibility and accountability has come,” Defence Committee chairman Ndung’u Gethenji said.

As stated, the time for responsibility and accountability has come. While well over a thousand people were rescued from the mall, the fact remain that the death toll was in the mid-60s, and if we are to be quite honest about it, will probably go over a hundred.

Serious questions will need to be asked regarding a) why security alerts over an impending attack may have been overlooked, especially considering the big black budget the intelligence agency gets for training (US and Israeli) as well as for keeping tabs on Somali terrorist activities. Another question, b), will be on the way the various agencies that responded to the situation did NOT communicate and work effectively with one another.

Within an hour of the attack the GSU Recce division, as well as several armed police and some armed civilians, had rushed into the mall and secured MOST of it. The vast majority of people who were rescued from the mall escaped during this time. Not only that, but they managed to trap the terrorists at one end of the mall ...which allowed the evacuation. Now, the GSU Recce squad is one of the best trained Kenyan units, with the Israelis playing a huge part on training and weapons (M4s), and was the unit best placed to handle the situation. The Recce squad had normal armed police surround the place), and they went in to relieve the armed civilians who had done a brave job of holding the tide.

Then what happened? The Kenya Army gets involved, with the Kenya Army Special Operations Force (comprised of Army Special Forces, Army Rangers and 20 Para commandoes) moving in. Now, these guys are well trained with, based on the few public sources of information, the Rangers trained by the Americans and the Special Forces by the British.
However, they were the wrong chaps to have there. For one, the reporting structures are totally different. GSU Recce is a special Police Force unit, reporting to the commissioner of police. The army forces report to the head of the armed forces. Problem one. Problem two is that the army guys shot one of the cops. Problem three is the GSU Recce withdrew, since the army probably said they were taking over, and the army didn't fill the vacuum.

Result?

Well, the terrorists retook lost ground, had time to properly prepare, took additional hostages - and killed more people - and by the time the whole thing was over part of the roof had collapsed.

Thus, the time for hard questions has come, and while for most of the week it was more about rescuing people and getting the terrorists, now it is time for lessons learned. Not just in how the operation was handled, but also some of the failures that include having a porous border, having huge refugee camps that have many Somalis, and tackling the financing of these terror groups (most of the terror money in the horn of Africa has to come to Nairobi since there is really nowhere else nearby that can be considered modern it can go to with similar ease).

It's a good thing over a thousand people were saved, but there are still several hard questions that need to be answered.

has lots of pictures.

A big problem in British former colonies is the politicians are trained to not trust the military and lasways have a divided command structure to prevent power seizure. While this may be good to keep themselves inpower its bad whe facing a determined enemy.

India too had this problem of divided command and multiple agencies being tasked to respond to 26/11 attack.

[krishnan]

in both the police were the first to arrive, which makes it very important to arm and train them properly.

[ramana]

Don't know if this was posted before. Report of the High Level Enquiry Comittee(HELC) on 26/11 from Maharastra State govt in MS Word doc format:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/photo/5289981.cms

[Karan M]

And this?

A year since 26/11: OP Black Tornado: A Case Study

Following is the report of a presentation, "Urban Counter Terrorism Operations: OP Black Tornado-A Case Study" by Maj Gen Abhaya Gupta, SM, VSM, IG (Ops), NSG (now retired) held at the United Service Institution of India, New Delhi, on 4 March, 2009.
Opening address by Lt Gen PK Singh, PVSM, AVSM (Retd), Director, USI:
Lt Gen PK Singh reflected that the subject “Urban Counter Terrorism Operations” is a very apt and hot topic for discussion worldwide, especially since 26/11.
The potential and probability of such un-conventional attacks taking place in any part of the world is a potent threat today, and hence the need for understanding the nature and environment of such a warfare in an urban setting and to counter it, The Royal United Services Institute in the UK held a seminar shortly after the Mumbai attack, realizing the need for comprehending such scenarios and the RAND corporation in the US had also sought inputs from USI on the response mechanism of the Indian security agencies to the Mumbai attack.
Lt Gen Noble Thamburaj, PVSM, SM, VCOAS (now retired):
Lt Gen Thamburaj asserted that it would be unfair to categorize that the entire country was held to ransom for 60 hours during the Mumbai attacks, though certain machineries of the government had stopped functioning.

The army and the NSG had to assume and get on with the job, as no clear picture of the unfolding situation was presented by people already on the ground.

Dwelling on the role played by the media, he believed that it was in fact, very well behaved and had not crossed the ‘Lakshman Rekha’ assigned to it or had hindered operations in any way.

The media had done a service to the nation by bringing the operations to the centre stage and forced the government to take hard decisions.

Maj Gen Abhaya Gupta, SM, VSM, IG (Ops), NSG
Part-I: ‘Operation Black Tornado’- The Mumbai Operations.
On the night of 26 November 2008, firing incidents had taken place at various locations in Mumbai. Initial reports suggested a gang-war taking place. However, in a few hours, it was confirmed to be a terrorist situation.
In an encounter with the Mumbai Police, one terrorist had been killed and one captured alive.
The National Security Guard (NSG) was inducted into Mumbai at 0300 h on
27 November 2008 after covering a distance of 1163 Km from New Delhi by
air transport.
Initially two targets were identified- The Taj Palace hotel and the Oberoi- Trident in South Mumbai. Accordingly, forces were divided into two parts, under the command of DIG (Ops) NSG and Deputy Force Commander, 51 SAG.
Preliminary briefing was provided by Mumbai Police and the hotel staff.
Accretions were being flown in for simultaneous operations.
Later, a terrorist situation was confirmed at a third location- the Nariman house, hence the task force was further divided into three sub-task forces, one each for the Taj, Oberoi-Trident and the Nariman house.
The second contingent arrived on 27 November and the third along with support elements on 28 November.
The Task Force comprised of 195 army personnel drawn from the 51 and 52 Special Action Groups (SAG).
Two sniper detachments from the Taj were sent to the Nariman House to pin down the terrorists present there, within the building.
The operational strategy was to neutralize the terrorists through ‘shock’ action using varied methods of insertions and tactical manoeuvering:-
· Using small ‘HIT’ teams of 5 personnel each.
· Inter and Intra Co-ordination and Communication.
· Top-down innovative tactics.
· Use overwhelming small arms fire to pin down the terrorists.
· Render safe procedure (RSP) to sanitize and secure the buildings.

Operations at the Taj Towers and the Taj Palace Hotel
Layout: The Taj Palace Hotel
· Length of each corridor per floor is about 840 ft, total length of the hotel being about 1.80 Kms.
· Total area- 49,1400 sq.ft.
· 330 rooms, 2-3 rooms in each suite, 140 miscellaneous rooms including generator plants, etc. (in the basement), 17 suites in each floor.

Layout of The Taj Towers:
· 21 floors with with 17 rooms in each floor.
· Total rooms - 323.
Difficulties in Conducting Operations
· Time to break open, enter and conduct quick search of one room took four-five minutes, for 500 rooms- 33-40 hrs,50-63 hrs for the Taj Towers alone.
· Inside the building only 200 SAG personnel operated.
· Large area of operations, ensuring safety of guests/ civilians.
· Thick granite walls of the Taj nullified effectiveness of rocket fire, hence were not used.
· Only one master key was available, hence doors had to be broken open.
· Limited hotel staff was available, no knowledge of various small rooms in the corridors which could be used as hiding places.
· Lack of ambient light inside the rooms and the curtains were drawn from inside.
· Occupants were too scared and never identified themselves or opened the doors upon knocking or calling. Some occupants had ventured out of their rooms earlier and were shot by the terrorists, word of this incident had spread quickly and the hotel staff had advised the guests to shut themselves inside their rooms.
At 0920 h on 27 November, the NSG took over operations from the MARCOS and obtained the hotel layout plan. The Taj Chambers and the restaurants were cleared and secured first. At the Taj Palace, the ground floor was secured and the OP base was set up there.
Top-down operations were launched by approaching the terrace from the service stairs.
Inputs had suggested that two terrorists were present inside the Taj. Contact was established at the first floor during floor clearance. Fire was coming from two terrorists from the left corner of the corridor.
One SAG commando got injured in the middle of the staircase leading to the first floor. It was then that Maj Sandeep Unnikrishnan pulled him down to the basement and asked his squad to stay there and charged the staircase himself, firing at the terrorists. At this moment, two more terrorists unexpectedly fired from the right corner of the first floor corridor, injuring Maj Unnikrishnan. He later succumbed to his injuries.
Eventually, the four terrorists got cornered at the Wasabi restaurant on the first floor.
Due to the wooden spiral staircases and granite walls of the bar, they were immune to NSG fire. IEDs were used to blast open entry into the restaurant and due to the blast effect and shock waves created, one terrorist jumped out of the window and was shot. The rest died inside the restaurant.

Operations at the Oberoi-Trident
Layout:
11 floors, with 33 rooms on each floor, three interlinking corridor at three levels (floors) with the Trident Hotel.
Unlike the Taj, the two terrorists here were not pro-active and after the initial shooting of guests on 26 November, lied low in a room. They opened fire only once while changing their location and on an another occasion when fired at.
They were fixed in room number 1856 which was opened using a master key and fire was drawn from the terrorists. One terrorist was killed while escaping near the lift on the corridor, while the other hid himself inside the bathroom. Later, it was ascertained that he was defiladed from own fire from outside as he had moved into the bathtub.
The Oberoi hotel was cleared by 1400 h on 28 November, and after render safe procedure, handed over to the civil police at 1800 h on 29 November.
Operations at Nariman House
Nariman House is located in a densely populated neighbourhood in South Mumbai. Inhabited by Jews, even residents of the area had no access to it, nor did anyone possess any knowledge of the layout inside.
Sniper detachments were positioned on the surrounding buildings, and the command base was set up near an under-construction building, which provided the vantage point to bring down observed fire on the Nariman House.
The terrorists while moving in had broken the window panes of the house which lay strewn on the ground. Therefore, the sound emanating from the broken glasses alerted the terrorists and would then bring down effective fire on the approaching commandos.
The building had iron grills on all sides and the curtains were drawn from inside. The terrorists had blasted the inner staircase connecting the floors, however could not prevent the commandos from negotiating them.
The maid while escaping with baby Moshe, informed that the terrorists had moved over to the adjacent Merchant House. At one time, the locals had speculated on the possibility of six terrorists including a female being present inside.
Owing to such mixed inputs, the clearance of all neighbouring buildings became a necessity and operations commenced on the intervening night of 27/28 November.
The signal intercept provided by the Mumbai Police, revealed the terrorists shooting down the remaining two female hostages, who had already been shot earlier.
The force was divided into an assault group, which slithered down the helicopter at 0715 h on 28 November, while the support element brought down observed fire on the building. There was no time for rehearsals.
The sixth and the fifth floors were cleared first and contact was established with the terrorists at 0800 h on the fourth floor.
It was at this moment, when Hav Gajender Singh, while attempting to break into the room from the front door was fired upon by the two terrorists from divergent locations inside the room.
After this attempt, another entry point was created using an IED. Co-ordinated fire was brought down from two sides now, ie, the front door and the broken wall, while the commandos moved into the room and neutralized both the terrorists.
The objective was cleared by 1825 h on 28 November.
Summary
In all, eight terrorists were killed during the operation by the NSG and a total of 610 hostages/guests rescued from all the three locations.
The NSG suffered two fatal and 18 non-fatal casualties.

PART-II: Challenges Ahead
The various shortcomings and lessons learnt from the Mumbai incident:-
· Traditional thinking on conflict management needs to change.
· Failure of co-operation and synergised effort between various agencies.
· Lack of any broad-vision, higher level direction, communication and co-ordination.
· Is there an active role for higher commanders in Counter-terrorist operations and if so what should it be?
· With the new urban terror environment, the troops to task ratio needs to be discussed; essential need for reserves at each level, for quick insertion and re-deployment.
· With Urban terror terrain undergoing a sea change from single/double storey buildings to malls, hotels, offices, etc. with multiple entry points, there is a need to evolve new tactics and techniques to counter terror.
· How do we ensure minimum casualties; more time it takes, more is the pressure to accomplish the task, whereas in moving swiftly there is a risk of incurring casualties.
· Need to generate tactical intelligence for which suitable finances and resources be made readily available.
· Radio communication problems- more hand held sets are required.
· Hostage- terrorist identification was a problem.
Recommendations/ Milestones to be achieved
· Need for a better synergy between the centre and the states.
· Launch multi-faceted and integrated operations.
· State governments should be made more accountable, since law and order is a state subject.
· Enhance professionalism of state forces.
· There should be a clear channel of Operational command.
· National Policy should be in line with Constitutional provisions.
· Harmonise all instruments of National Power- Start from a position of strength- military operations, but compliment it with political solutions.
· Need for a media policy – Start was made, but left mid-way.
· Take steps to deter/dissuade our neighbours from indulging in such attacks.

Discussion
· What should be the role of the army and should garrison units take own initiative and respond to such situations as had emerged in Mumbai? Ghatak platoons can be trained and made available to localise the terrorists, till such time as specialised forces arrive.
· Should the army get involved in an urban terror environment? The actual assault is always carried out by the army as CPMFs are not adequately trained and equipped to deal with such situations. Even in Mumbai, the first responders, in the initial few hours had failed to ‘fix’ the terrorists at one location and isolate them.
· The scope of employing chemical agents against terrorists has been studied by the NSG, but since they release odour and are found to be harmful to some categories of people, such as heart patients, old people, etc, it cannot be employed in a wide area where all kinds of people are present.
· NSG has no authority to jam mobile/radio communication and lacks the equipment to block transmissions in larger areas, even in case of airline hijacking; no consensus has been evolved to jam transmission.
· The helicopter assault on Nariman House could not be launched at night due to lacking of night avionics capability in helicopters. In the morning the operation was delayed due to hazy weather conditions.
· Diversion for other tasks is distracting the SAG from its primary role. Is police culture in NSG diminishing its ethos, and therefore should it be under Police control?
· Intelligence agencies need to be made more accountable and brought under Parliamentary oversight. Developing Human intelligence capabilities is the key to prevent terror attacks.
Conclusion
The presentation was well attended by the officers of the service headquarters and veteran officers. It provided an authentic and precise account of the operations carried out in Mumbai, coming as it did from the horse’s mouth, i.e. the IG (Ops) NSG, who operated from Ops rooms established at the Taj and Nariman Point. The debate generated led to pertinent issues being addressed. The new terror environment and the growing liberalism in society is presenting numerous soft targets to the barbaric terrorists who are a much different and a highly indoctrinated and motivated lot. They come with a pre-meditated will to die and hence look to inflict maximum casualties. Therefore, capturing such ruthless and radical bunch of terrorists is well nigh impossible and neutralizing them before they wreak havoc is a challenge facing all counter-terrorist agencies including the elite NSG. There is a need to change and re-orient our tactics to deal with such a lot of terrorists and at the same time minimize own casualties.
Lest We Forget
Maj Sandeep Unnikrishnan, AC, 7 BIHAR, 51 SAG (Posthumous)
Hav Gajender Singh, AC, 10 PARA (SF), 51 SAG (Posthumous)
The 51 and 52 Special Action Groups of the NSG were conferred with 1 Kirti Chakra, 1 Shaurya Chakra, 6 Sena Medals (Gallantry), 1 Sena Medal (Distinguished) and 1 COAS Commendation Card for OP Black Tornado.

[SSridhar]

Pak Court Yet to Receive Record of Mumbai Attacks Proceedings - Meena Menon, The Hindu

The Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) hearing the 2008 Mumbai terror attack case is yet to receive the record of proceedings of the Pakistan Judicial Commission's cross examination of witnesses during its visit to India last month.

The Special Public Prosecutor of the case Chaudhury Mohammed Azhar told The Hindu on Tuesday that the matter was postponed to October 24 since the records had not arrived by October 3, which was earlier date of hearing.

He said there were two days left for the matter to come up and the Foreign Office had not received the proceedings, which was to be presented to the ATC judge.

The Commission returned from India on September 26 and had cross examined two witnesses, a doctor and the investigating officer of the terror attacks case in the court of an additional chief metropolitan magistrate. Mr. Azhar had said the visit was very cordial and even though the prosecution had a limited scope, it was able to re-examine all the evidence “within the given circumstances.”

The underlined phrases above are indicators of the shape of things to come. The defence will ask the court to reject the findings of the judicial commission as the cross examination of the witnesses was not free and fair. The ATC will concur. The ground is being prepared.

See here for a chronology of court drama in Pakistan

[Lalmohan]

i think we need to stop caring about the phoney judicial processes of a failed state that has degenerated into moral banktrupcy and is populated by people lacking basic civilisational values and norms

[ramana]

LM, Understood. What SS is doing is documenting the meandering sliipery path the TSP has chosen to try to wriggle out of its commitments.

[SSridhar]

Lalmohan, right at the very beginning, we all knew that it would go nowhere. But the chronicle that we maintain here is very revealing. It shows how everyone, the GoP, judiciary, prosecutors, defence lawyers, terrorists, et al are all in it together; how every step is thwarted; what tactics are employed etc.

In fact, there is a gag on reporting the court proceedings (unlike the case against Kasab in India) in this case in the ATC. Whatever little is being reported is leakage or what the lawyers say etc. If only we have access to the court proceedings, I am sure it would reveal monumental duplicity and deception

[Lalmohan]

you are right ofcourse, my patience has worn out, thats all

[SSridhar]

Pakistan Wants More Evidence on Mumbai Attacks - Meena Menon, The Hindu

The Pakistan government on Friday said it would need more evidence from the Indian side to move ahead in the Mumbai attacks case. Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry told journalists that India and Pakistan needed to work with each other and not against each other.

In response to questions about U.S. President Barack Obama bringing up the issue of prosecuting those involved in the Mumbai 26, 2008 terror strike in his meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Mr. Chaudhry said people cannot be brought to book without a fair trial and that is why more evidence was needed.

He did not specify the nature of the evidence that was lacking and where India had fallen short in providing proof. The Pakistan Judicial Commission visited India last month and things were moving. Terrorism was of great concern to Pakistan as it was also a victim, he pointed out.

However, the trial of the case has been languishing for a few years now. The Pakistan Judicial Commission visited Mumbai in September to cross examine two witnesses. The record of proceedings in court has not yet been sent to the Foreign Office.

As a result, the matter was postponed twice this month at the Anti Terrorism Court here. The next hearing is on November 6.

India has been demanding the handing over of one of the key accused in the Mumbai strike, Hafiz Saeed, who heads the Jamat-ud-Dawa and is engaged in relief work. The U.S. has also placed a reward on him. The Pakistan government believes there is no evidence to bring Saeed to book for the attacks and has supported his relief work.

The Punjab provincial government has given him funds for his social activities. The matter was also raised when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met Mr. Sharif on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

Hope case will be expedited: Shinde

Sandeep Joshi adds from New Delhi:

Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Friday said U.S. President Barack Obama’s straight talk with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif regarding delay in trial of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks case accused, including the mastermind — Lashkar-e-Taiba founder and Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Sayeed — would help in expediting the case and bring to justice all those who were behind the massacre.

“We are hopeful that President Barack Obama’s tough talking to Nawaz Sharif will have an impact on the ground. It will help in expediting the trial and proceed against Hafiz Saeed,” Mr. Shinde told journalists here.

Mr. Obama had on Thursday asked the Prime Minister why there had been no progress in the 26/11 trial in Pakistan, where a case is going on in a special anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi.

See here for a chronology of court drama in Pakistan

[SSridhar]

Mumbai attacks' case trial to proceed on judicial panel's information: Pakistan - ToI

Pakistan foreign ministry spokesman's utterance yesterday that there was insufficient information to proceed with the case is an indication of the shape of things to come. He is softening the blow for India that is coming. This is not going anywhere.

Pakistan on Friday said the trial in the Mumbai attacks case would be carried forward based on the information brought by a judicial commission that had visited India recently.

"Based on the information brought by the judicial commission, our courts will proceed further," Foreign Office spokesman Aizaz Chaudhry said.

Chaudhry had said here on Friday in his weekly press conference that the Pakistan would need more evidence from the Indian side with regard to the Mumbai attacks case.

Asked what he had meant by "more evidence" he had said, "I do not have the details. The point is that the two countries need to work together in a cooperative manner so that trials take place with proper evidence".

Replying to queries on kind of evidence needed, since the Pakistani judicial commission had a successful trip to India, Pakistani officials didn't elaborate and had said they will have to check on the latest developments.

Incidentally, Chaudhry's comments about need for additional evidence was missing from the official transcripts released to the media later.

Replying to a query on if the slow pace of Mumbai terror attack was discussed between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and and President Barack Obama, he said issues relating to counter-terrorism were discussed.

"The prime minister made it clear that the issue of terrorism is of as much concern to Pakistan as for India if not more.

"In fact we are the victims of terrorism. The answer lies in working jointly to defeat this common enemy," he said.

Asked today, whether Pakistan still needs more evidence from India, Chaudhry said, "Please check with the ministry of interior".

Meanwhile, advisor to prime minister on national security and foreign affairs Sartaj Aziz said Pakistan would take action against Mumbai attacks accused Hafiz Saeed if they get "concrete legal evidence" to do so.

"We told them that the trial of Mumbai suspects will start soon...we will take action against Hafiz Saeed if we have concrete legal evidence to do so," Aziz said in an interview to Dawn daily.

Pakistan's prosecution team had earlier said their trip to Mumbai was "excellent from the prosecution's point of view".

Special public prosecutor Chaudhury Mohammed Azhar had said the Indian authorities cooperated with the Pakistani commission.

The Mumbai attacks trial here in Pakistan has been going on at a slow pace and on October 23, it was postponed by another two weeks.

It was delayed because records of the cross-examination of Indian witnesses by a Pakistani judicial commission in connection with the attacks case had not reached the court in Islamabad.

See here for a chronology of court drama in Pakistan

[Brad Goodman]

David Headley 'bragged' about Mumbai attacks in emails, book claims
posting in full

CHICAGO: A Danish journalist says barely a week after the November 26, 2008 terrorist strikes on Mumbai, David Coleman Headley, their most high-profile Chicago plotter, was "bragging" about them in an email forum. What seems remarkable about Karre Sorenson's finding is the extent of Headley's involvement in the planning of the Mumbai attacks and who also justifies the Mumbai killings, calling them "retaliation" for the wrongs done in Kashmir and even Afghanistan.

Karre Sorenson, a journalist with the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, has just published a book about a particularly brutal but abortive plot by Headley against his own newspaper. Although the 350-page book in the Danish language titled "Halshug", which means behead or decapitate in Danish, focuses mainly on the conspiracy to attack the newspaper offices in Copenhagen, it also contains 80 pages about the Mumbai attacks.

"I've gained access to all 9,000 emails on the email-forum for old students of the military academy that Headley went to in Pakistan. More than 300 of them are written by David Headley; most of them between the years 2008 and 2009. These emails show us a great amount of details about Headley and his state of mind. The emails tell of specific stories or events in Headley's life. And they also show us his brutal words about Denmark and India," Sorenson told "Hi India" newsweekly, published from here, in an email interview to coincide with the publication of the book.
{how can we read all these emails must be a mine of information?}

The 300 odd emails by Headley that the journalist went through suggested how well-informed the Pakistani American was. "It (the exchange) also shows that Headley wrote personal information about the attackers of the Mumbai attack not long after the attack, information that he probably got from his contacts within the LeT ( Lashkar-e-Taiba)."

He just couldn't resist bragging about it. So Dec 3 2008 he wrote: "Yes, they were only 10 kids, guaranteed. I hear 3 of the kids were Hafiz and 2 were married with a daughter each under 3 years old."

Hi India has a copy of the particular email, which is part of Halshug published by Denmark's People's Press. The content of the email is a broad indictment of India for its conduct in Kashmir as well as what followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992.

In a particularly harsh passage, Headley says, "Our opinion here is that the casualties in Mumbai are should (sic) really be taken as Collateral Damage from the Daisy cutters (bombs) that have been falling in Afghanistan as well as the over 70000 dead in Kashmir over the last 20 years at the hands of the Terrorist Indian Army. As you can see that more than 500 commandos had a hard time containing 10 kids. These pieces of shit have no stomach for a fight. All their valor is reserved for the girls in Kashmir."

Sorenson, who covered the Chicago trial and conviction of Headley and his childhood friend Tahawwur Hussain Rana in 2011, said he had been "most interested" in Headley's focus on Denmark. "This is probably the most serious threat Denmark has seen in terms of modern day terrorism, so there has been a look of focus on how far the plan had progressed, and what actually had happened."

The threat in question was constituted by the plot hatched by Headley with apparent blessings of the LeT against Sorenson's newspaper offices in Copenhagen and Aarhus. The attacks were in retaliation for the newspaper's 2005 publication of cartoons, which Muslims considered insulting to the Prophet Mohammed. One of the elements of the abortive attacks, which was deliberately meant to stun the world, was to behead captives at the newspaper and throw their heads on to the street in Copenhagen. The idea behind this macabre plan was to provoke the Danish authorities into a strong, possibly military, response.

Sorenson said the Headley plot has resulted in "very tight security" at all their facilities but did not dwell on the details because of its sensitive nature. However, he said the book does not talk about how the plot might have influenced Denmark's national security policies.

Asked how he assessed the role played by Rana in the Denmark plot, Headley's closest childhood friend and a Pakistani army doctor who became Canadian and later a permanent resident of the US, Sorenson said, "I think it's clear that Rana knew that something was going to happen in Denmark. But there are still many questions about Rana that I would like to have answered. Hopefully, we will know more about him if he at one point decides to talk to the press."

Headley, born Daood Sayed Gilani but who later changed his name, was sentenced to 35 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to his involvement both in the Mumbai and Denmark plots, while Rana was sentenced to 15 years for his role in the Danish newspaper plot

[SSridhar]

Why Look for 26/11 evidence elsewhere ? India asks Pakistan - Sandeep Dikshit, The Hindu

India has conveyed to Pakistan that it should look for more proof of the 2008 Mumbai attacks in its own land with “99 per cent of the evidence” available there.

New Delhi is also exercised over the reason given for the latest postponement of trial in Pakistan of the seven accused of masterminding the 26/11 attacks. Pakistan had claimed non-receipt of documents from India.

But official sources pointed out that India had submitted all that was asked for by the Pakistan High Commission here on October 15. It also assisted the Pakistani Judicial Commission when it visited Mumbai in September to interact with officials who had handled the aftermath of the attack.

The five documents submitted to the Pakistan High Commission included those relating to articles recovered from the attackers, proceedings of the Judicial Commission before the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate and a true copy of the Supreme Court judgment delivered in the case.

“The entire planning of the dastardly attack was hatched in Pakistan, the training of the terrorists who launched that attack was undertaken in Pakistan, the financing of the conspiracy was in Pakistan. It therefore follows that 99 per cent of the evidence will be available in Pakistan,” Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said here on Saturday.

A day earlier, his counterpart in Islamabad, Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry, told journalists that India and Pakistan needed to work with each other rather than against each other, but added that people could not be brought to book without a fair trial and that’s why more evidence was needed.

He did not specify the nature of evidence and where India had fallen short in providing proof. The first Indian reaction came the same day itself. Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde expressed the hope that U.S. President Barack Obama’s “tough talking” with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif would expedite the trial as well as encourage Islamabad to proceed against Lashkar-e-Taiba founder and Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed.

The case against seven Pakistanis is more well known in the security and diplomatic circles here as FIR No 1/2009, Rawalpindi Division. It has languished for a variety of reasons given by Pakistan, including the shifting of several judges, murder of a public prosecutor and not naming his successor for quite some time and a large number of witnesses.

[Brad Goodman]

tech geeks I think I know where to dawood gilani emails are posted. Are there any tech geeks who can crack and access it?

[CRamS]

SSridhar,

I refer you again to Jihadi Sethi's comment soon after the threat of war ebbed after 26/11. First his "10 bachhae" taunt and then triumphantly declaring that henceforth India will make a lot of noises, and TSP has to manage that until they (India) forget about it. What is GoI hoping to achieve out of this tamasha I don't know?

I doubt even the most "moderate" or the "moderate" in TSP, assuming such human beings exist in TSP, have any interest in probing 26/11. For them the chapter is closed, another "victory" in their war of 1000 cuts against India. Even MMSJi's friends like Asma Jehangir for whom he losses sleep when Indian immigration officials have the gall to see her papers, when she talks of 26/11, there will be lots of equal equal, something like "we have been victims of terror, and in all cases perpetrators go unpunished". Thats how seriously they take 26/11. And why should they? As I said, they view it as a victory and unless they are forced to, they are not going to act. Did Obama put any teeth behind his "urging" Nawaz Sharif to investigate 26/11 suspects? Or was that just a dog bone thrown at India?

[sum]

What was known all along ( and what GoI has supressed till now):

Exclusive! Who is ISI's Honey Bee in New Delhi?

Levy, in an exclusive interview to Rediff.com, said he tried hard to detect the identity of this Indian mole, but he is yet to succeed. The authors have dubbed the Indian ISI mole 'Honey Bee' in their book.

They claim that Major Iqbal of the ISI, who was David Coelman Headley's handler in Pakistan, organised a condensed version of the Pakistan army's two-year training course on surveillance and counter-intelligence.

The course was prepared on the basis of the Indian Army's training manual supplied by the Indian mole to the ISI.

Headley, the mastermind behind the Mumbai terror attacks, along with the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, successfully mounted the attack that killed 166 people and wounded hundreds more.

In a sensational claim, the authors write that 'Major Iqbal' had given Headley what is described as 'classic Indian files'. Iqbal boasted that he had obtained these files from the Indian police and army, which 'revealed their training and limitations.'

Levy believes that while the ISI's source in India is unlikely to be from the army, it could be someone from the Indian security establishment other than the army.

Iqbal boasted that they had 'a super agent' at work in New Delhi who was known as Honey Bee.

In addition to Honey Bee, Levy also claims there were people in Mumbai codenamed 'chuhas' (mice) who supplemented information and added to the details Headley provided to the Lashkar to plan the terror attacks in Mumbai.

"The LeT claims there were 10 collaborators working in Mumbai," says Levy.

The Ram Pradhan Commission of Inquiry, set up to probe the terror attacks, failed in its duty when it did not examine the 'local element,' Levy added. "The Pakistan side told me there exists Honey Bee and chuhas. The Indian side should have established their identity."

Before Headley started his journey to Mumbai to find a landing site for the terrorists, Levy claims that Major Iqbal gave him a bundle of counterfeit Indian rupees and revealed that Honey Bee, the ISI's Indian mole, had told him that Machchimar Nagar, a fishing colony in Cuffe Parade in south Mumbai, could be the landing site for their anti-India mission.

The spot was apparently suggested by the Indian mole as it does not have much of security, and Major Iqbal asked Headley to check it out.

[ramana]

Sum Its interesting but very implausible. First of all any terrorist faces Indian local police which is hardly trained to combat terrorists. In extreme case the NSG is called in. So getting a training manual for Indian Army is hardly useful for a Paki terrorist deep away from the borders as he has very little chance of meeting Indian Army face to face.
Secondly it hardly needs a mole to land terrorists in Mumbai area. ISI had landed boat loads of RDX in 1993 and even stored weapons with Bollywood stars(Sanjay Dutt etc). SO they don't need mole/vole.
Further Indian central and state govt were chasing saffron ghosts and were quite distracted to be looking for Paki terrorists. And even when faced with a terrorist strike the Mumbai Commissioner thought it better it hide it out in his jeep than go to the command center! So with such divided law and order the success of TSP was quite assured.

All this is Paki bragging about superear tactics when their strategy was wrong.

[vasu raya]

Without giving out anything new in the book other than what is already in public domain, this story was a plant

26/11: Headley, Honey Bee, the Americans and the ISI

'The Americans never or hardly give complete information, only information that directly affects them is shared.' Indian intelligence agents challenge The Siege's version of the 26/11 attacks in conversations with Vicky Nanjappa.

Click here!
A mole codenamed 'Honey Bee' helped Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence directorate in planning the 26/11 terror attacks, claims The Siege, Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott's new book.

So who is this 'Honey Bee'?

Intelligence Bureau officials believe if there was indeed such a mole, her or his identity could not have been kept a secret for so long.

Read: Exclusive! Who is ISI's Honey Bee in New Delhi?

When Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Coleman Headley visited India to conduct reconnaisance months before the attacks he was in touch with several Mumbai residents. One of them could well have been an informer for the Intelligence Bureau, sources told this correspondent.

Headley could have been tipped off by the ISI through his handler 'Major Iqbal' about such an Intelligence Bureau informer, these sources felt.

Informers for the police or intelligence agencies hail from varied backgrounds; some of them are criminals. They have no loyalties and can be easily lured with money. Headley may have done exactly this.

Headley did not reveal the presence of this informer to National Investigation Agency officers when they interrogated him in Chicago. He may not have wanted to "let the source down," the sources felt.

The information about 'Honey Bee' was leaked to Levy and Scott by American intelligence, Indian intelligence agents say.

The Americans also claimed they shared intelligence intercepts about a sea-borne attack with their Indian counterparts in 2006, according to The Siege.

Indian intelligence agents say the information was vague and ask what the Americans did to stop the attacks.

"They were aware of Headley, but did not pass the information on to us," one Indian intelligence agent said.

Buy The Siege here!

American agents flocked around NIA officials as they grilled Headley in Chicago, one Indian intelligence agent in the know told this correspondent. It was clear the Americans were wary about what Headley would reveal and did not want him to divulge more than what he already had to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Intelligence agents say Headley was in touch with 'socialites' during his visits to Mumbai so that he could gain access to sites like the Taj Mahal hotel without being suspected of dubious intentions.

Former Research and Analysis Wing agents say the ISI would not have risked using its moles in Indian intelligence for such a risky, high-profile, operation.

Amar Bhushan, a former special secretary, R&AW, who wrote Escape to Nowhere about Rabinder Singh, the R&AW agent who defected to the CIA, says, "Several Americans lost their lives in the 26/11 attacks. The US has done nothing to nail the culprits in Pakistan. This is not how America deals with those who murdered its people."

"This book (The Siege: The Attack On The Taj) which speaks about 'Honey Bee' is essentially a book written by the CIA," Bhushan alleged.

"They (the Amercicans) are trying to indicate that despite giving India so much information, nothing was done. It is their way of defending their intelligence and their system, to tell their people that they tried protecting them through alerts, but nothing really was done about it," Bhushan added.

"The Americans never or hardly give complete information," the former R&AW officer said, "only information that directly affects them is shared. The intel inputs on Headley did not affect them. What came as a bigger surprise was that they did not allow proper access to Headley."

Bhushan feels Headley could have revealed more had the NIA been granted greater access to him. "The Americans knew this would embarrass them and hence the limited access," Bhushan added. "Giving us vague information and then blaming us for it appears to be the intention behind this book. Our intelligence does not comprise a bunch of fools. Had they been given proper information, they would not have sat over it."

C D Sahay, a former R&AW chief, also questions the authenticity of 'Honey Bee.' "Anyone can write anything," he says, "It would have been more authentic had 'Honey Bee' been named."

[g.sarkar]

http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/s ... 1111.htm#1
Rediff.com » News » 26/11: 'America sacrificed Mumbai'
26/11: 'America sacrificed Mumbai to keep Headley playing'
November 11, 2013 17:01 IST
'What America could figure out is that this finally was an American with an American passport operating in Pakistan who had access to Al Qaeda. Now the prime objective of that time was the capture of bin Laden.'
'This is three years before Abbottabad, the only thing that the US intelligence agencies were thinking about was how do they decapitate him, how do they cut the head off of Al Qaeda and here was this tantalising, untrustworthy, difficult, hard to control, psychopathic individual, who was American.'
Adrian Levy, co-author of the book The Siege: The Attack on the Taj, speaks to Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt in an compelling interview.
This is one book that was dying to be written. The siege of the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai which began on November 26, 2008 by Pakistani terrorists and ended three days later was one emotion-filled, historic event that caught the world's attention.
Not just Mumbai, but India was under siege as Pakistani jihadis went about killing 166 innocent people, largely Indians.
Those hours were filled with astonishment, anguish and anger. A few Indian authors published books soon after the terror attacks, but no Indian media or authors have brought out the depth of the event and spread of the operation that took place before the horrendous event and its implications for the future of India and the world.
The comprehensive version has now arrived in the form of The Siege: 68 Hours Inside the Taj Hotel. The distinguished authors Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy are well-respected names in South Asia with remarkable books like Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy to their credit.
Levy has written extensively on Burma, Russia, Cambodia, and Pakistan. He has worked with the British print media and is an acclaimed filmmaker who has directed some incisive films for various channels, including the BBC and The History Channel.
In an exclusive interview to Rediff.com, Levy narrates the hard work that went into the making of the book which highlights how America's compromise with David Coleman Headley, one of the masterminds of the attacks, affected India's national interest.
The book is worth reading because it is written after getting Pakistan's version of the genesis of the terror plot, America's dealing with Headley and its self-centered diplomacy and, most importantly, truly exhaustive details that have been obtained from the Indian system.
Scott-Clark and Levy travelled to 15 countries on four continents and interviewed hundreds of sources, witnesses and people, including the parents of Pakistani jihadis who landed in south Mumbai to attack the city.
The book re-creates the human tragedy inside the Taj Mahal hotel in those 68 hours, giving a virtual second-by-second account of what went on inside when the world was watching the horror unfolding on television.
Levy tells Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt that even five years after the terror attacks, the Indian establishment has not honestly approached the event and learnt the right lessons.
What brought you to this subject?
I was really motivated by the fact that no one, to my mind, has really taken this seriously.
You know when 9/11 happened, there is the 9/11 Commission report and there are nearly 600 pages of very detailed analysis.
When 7/7 happened in London, there are thousands of pages and it is available for the public to see in the National Archives, it is being updated all the time.
In both cases, particularly in the American experience, there are may be two or three great books that have been written -- Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright; Steve Coll has written a great work on (Osama) bin Laden.
And you tell me what happened after 26/11? The Pradhan Committee report is just 64 pages. 64! No interviewing of the intelligence agencies, no interviewing of the military, no interviewing of the National Security Guard, no politicians, just the police.
This is not a serious response to a seminal event like 26/11. The sacrifice by people, and also the stigma of the attack on the city, and it is one of the first of many things that will happen now.
It was a new wave. We have seen it with Nairobi and we will see it again and again and again. And it is very significant for so many reasons. Firstly, because people are not taking 26/11 seriously enough. I feel they have brushed it under the carpet. I think that is not also a testimony to the dead, to the survivors, to the people in the security service, the Taj staff, the guests, the policemen who did fight, where are their stories?
You know, maybe a little bit on cable news, something on YouTube, maybe (reporter) Ashish Khetan wrote something in the book (26/11 Mumbai Attacked) that came out in 2009 which was an immediate gut reaction.
Where is the attempt to do the big picture? Tell this as it is and say that this is the story of 26/11? This is my thinking........."
Gautam

[ramana]

Talk to Neroynan.

[ramana]

CIA hid more then they revealed on 26/11:RAW

RAW have been startled by the claims made in a recently launched book that 26 intelligence inputs were forwarded by the American CIA to the Indian agencies prior to the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. (File photo)

The sleuths in the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) have been startled by the claims made in a recently launched book that 26 intelligence inputs were forwarded by the American CIA to the Indian agencies prior to the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.

Officials privy to the files at RAW’s Pakistan Operations Desk confirmed that only two intercepts, on September 18 and September 24, 2008, were forwarded by the CIA desk in Islamabad to the RAW headquarters here.

“The two inputs had indeed warned of a possible terror strike on Mumbai through sea routes but the claims about 26 intelligence warnings seem to be highly exaggerated.

The fact is, the CIA hid more than it had actually revealed to Indian agencies about a terrorist plot in Pakistan,” officials told Express.

On November 19, 2008 RAW operatives in Mumbai had intercepted suspicious communication which suggested a possible assault on the maximum city, that was relayed to the agency’s Pakistan Desk. The input was forwarded to the then National Security Adviser, M K Narayanan and other security agencies including the Director General of Coast Guard.

“A total of three inputs including one input generated by the RAW was received before the attack. There were some other inputs generated by IB which was shared with police and subsequently the security apparatus at two hotels were strengthened,” they said.

A source said that after the 26/11 attack,the CIA was caught on the wrong-foot for aiding its freelancer David Coleman Headley. Despite having information on Headley’s links with the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the American authorities chose to ignore his activities which eventually led to the Mumbai attacks, that killed 164 and left over 300 injured.

“After the attack, the CIA and American authorities went into damage control mode and distanced themselves from Headley. But they had also pressured the Indian government not to pursue Headley’s extradition as he would have revealed what the CIA was trying to hide from the Indian agencies,” he said.


A leaked secret cable from the US embassy here had revealed the American agencies’ fear about Headley. The US Ambassador Timothy Roemer, during his discussion on the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement on December 16, had raised the issue of Headley’s extradition with Narayanan and sought India’s commitment that it will not seek Headley’s extradition.

Narayanan replied that it was “difficult not to be seen making the effort,” but that the government was not seeking extradition “at this time.”

The NSA added that the Indian government would be ‘in the hot seat’ if it were seen as pre-emptively relinquishing extradition,” a US secret cable revealed.

Former additional secretary of RAW Jayadev Ranade said the initial tip-off definitely came from the CIA, but there was no continuous flow of intelligence.

“Our own specific input was more real that a dhow was coming but the Coast Guard didn’t act. In fact, the CIA had more information on terrorist activities in Pakistan which they shared only a few days after the attack. Even Headley’s interrogation was limited,” he said.

While the report is about the inaccuracy of US claims of 26 iputs to India about the 26/11 attack, ther real question is when they had three inpouts andone specific generated by hteri own sources, what did GOI do to deter the attack?

Looks like not much. They alerted the Coast Guard and went back to watching Carbnatic music katcheris.

This is the fundamental flaw of the post of NSA in India. He is merely the glorified National Intelligence Officer who collects information and passes it on. The post is like a defanged cobra.

Can hiss at locals and threaten them but cant do anything to external forces even when he has the resources.

[vasu raya]

The unresolved puzzles of the 26/11 attacks

The message is that the see-ya is infiltrating TSP tanzeems by seemingly cooperating in the latters anti India plans

[ramana]

please post the article for it refutes the Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy thesis.

[vishvak]

link
Another article on above mentioned book, The Siege.

..
Why did the Americans ignore so many explicit warnings about Headley’s conduct? Why didn’t they alert New Delhi, when Headley’s frequent and suspicious trips to Mumbai were brought to their notice? The answers to these questions have never been sought.
..
If Headley’s American handlers had sent him on a mission to infiltrate the Lashkar, who authorised his idea to plan and help execute an attack on Mumbai? Did Headley dissuade the Lashkar leadership from shifting its war to Afghanistan because it would have harmed US interests? Why wasn’t Headley handed over to India for a detailed interrogation? The authors’ account lead us to these questions, which have not been answered. Unravelling such inconvenient truths do not seem to be in anyone’s interests.

[ramana]

Good questions. At same time we wont know as Indian side is not talking.
DCH also looks like an agent provacater.

- LeT is not the route to infiltrate AlQ.
- LeT had minor goals in its Mumbai attack
- DCH provides new targets of the Chabad House and the Leopold Cafe

Bigger question LeT wants to attack India in order to avoid their group splitting and attacking US!
is LeT also under US guidance?
Was Neroyanan told to swallow/absorb the attack as coallateral for nuke deal?

What did MMS mean when he is reported to have said to MKN when he wanted to quit "You have tired your best and it didn't work."
What was the best?

And more than everything forget about US.
What did India know and what did they do about it?

And who is Jundal really?

[vasu raya]

please post the article for it refutes the Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy thesis.

Colonel (retd) Anil Athale
The mysteries around the attacks on Mumbai swirl around even after five years. The most important is whether the 10 terrorists who carried out the attacks had local support, says Colonel (retd) Anil Athale.

The forthcoming publication of a book The Siege: The attack on the Taj and the fifth anniversary of the Mumbai attack has brought forth many newer insights on that event. As is to be expected the version of Adrian Levi and Cathy Scot-Clark that the Indians failed to act on American warnings has been contested by the Indian intelligence officials.

The authors make a point that though the Americans did give repeated warnings about the likely target and even method, they did not reveal the source.

This is unfair to the Americans as no intelligence agency ever reveals its source. But the authors have raised another serious issue -- the negligence of the Taj hotel management in ignoring and then dismantling the security that the Mumbai police had insisted on. The Taj management must be held accountable for this action that jeopardised the security of its clients.

The US attempt in preserving the ‘mole’ David Hadley (or Dawood Gilani) in order not jeopardise the operation to nab terror mastermind Osama bin Laden is understandable.

During the WW-II (Operation Bodyguard) in order to keep the secret of ‘Ultra’ (a machine that enabled the Allies to listen to the most secret German communications) Winston Churchill sacrificed Coventry and other British towns to German bombings.

Churchill was afraid that if Allies took extra precautions at those targets, about which he knew through ‘Ultra’, the Germans may well find out that their secret was compromised and may change the mode of communications.

Churchill was not prepared for this and so sacrificed British lives. In the circumstances the Americans did the second best by giving sufficient warnings; after all many Americans also died in that attack.

Vulnerability of the seas around Mumbai is a well known fact. In the early 1960s an American Daniel Walcott, had flown aircraft that dropped arms in the Murud-Janjira area. Wolcott was finally caught by the Bombay police in January, 1966. He had, a year earlier, brazenly flown off Palam airport to Pakistan!

In the 1970s, the west coast was a smugglers paradise -- when names like Haji Mastan and Karim Lala dominated the Mumbai underworld. There was very little fishing since smuggling was far more lucrative!

The smuggled goods ranging from tape recorders to cameras were openly sold in tiny shops on Sukhlaji Street in the Red Light area of Foras Road! Even the tonnes of RDX that was sent to India in 1993, was unloaded on beaches not far from Mumbai.

Given this past, it was a well known fact that Mumbai was vulnerable to infiltration of terrorists from sea.

But it stretches imagination too far to say that Headley was not noticed by Indian agencies. His frequent journeys from Karachi were bound to have raised a red flag! Given the volatile situation in Karachi, the only Americans who would transit this route would be either diplomats or spies.

Headley’s shady background and ostensible job as a ‘travel agent’ were a dead giveaway. Even a dysfunctional, Bollywood aspirant like Rahul Bhatt, whom he befriended, is reported to have joked about Headley being a spy. It is mind boggling that what Rahul Bhatt could sense the Indian intelligence did not!

The truth is David Headley was hiding ‘in plain sight’ in Mumbai. From the reports about his interview with Indian intelligence, he comes out as a typical Pakistani braggart! And what a spy -- with mismatched eyes that make sure that he sticks out in a crowd. It is most likely that the Indian authorities ‘knew’ about David Headley’s ‘real’ mission and decided to play him along for more or less the same reason that the Americans gave him a long rope!

His arrest by the Americans in October 2009 at Chicago, a full six months before the killing of Osama raises a question! What may well be the fact is that Headley’s usefulness ended even before the successful raid on Osama.

Headley was ‘outed’ in order to protect some others still in the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, which carried out the Mumbai attacks, and at a far higher level. Headley seems more like a pawn that was sacrificed to save the Queen!

The published details of Headley’s activities in Mumbai do not amount to much. In an era of the internet and Google Earth, with detailed street level maps and pictures freely available, an amateur taking a few photographs of sensitive installations amounts to very little. But it what may well be that Headley set up a local support cell for the 26/11 attacks.

But the ‘real’ issue of 26/11 that is shrouded in mystery is that of local support to this terrorist operation. The first issue is why did 10 men coming in a rubber dingy to the Machimar colony not make the residents suspicious? The dingy in which the terrorists landed is typically used by army or navy and not anyone else! On top of it, the men just tied the dingy and left... almost like leaving a car with ignition keys at a busy street corner!

The whole landing episode is shrouded in mystery. On top of it is a question as to how did complete strangers to Mumbai make their way to the designated targets, especially one like Chabad House, virtually unknown to most. It seems reasonable to conclude that the terrorists had a reception party waiting for them and local guides.

Even more crucial is the question as to how the terrorists holed in Taj hotel kept firing for nearly 60 hours! Given the fact that the AK-47 rifles they were armed with have a very high rate of fire, 400 rounds per minute, they must have fired thousands of rounds of ammunition! A rubber dingy is incapable of carrying that kind of weight and ten men!

The issue of local support could be easily resolved one way or the other. When the Taj was cleaned up after the attack, the police must have surely collected the fired cases... especially those with POF (Pakistan Ordnance Factory) markings.

Unfortunately over the years there is a political consensus over playing down or denying the involvement of ‘local’ elements in any terror incident.

This is done ostensibly to prevent a backlash against the minority community. India has come a long way since 1947.

Even the 7/11 Mumbai train bombings, much more ghastly than 26/11, saw no reaction against minority.

What this has done is that in a defensive reaction a sense of victimhood has been built up in the minority even over minor incidents!

An imbecile politician even had the gall to tell a foreign diplomat that it is majority communalism that is the greater threat! Internationally, this has given a handle to predator western states a handle to bash the majority community in India!

Colonel (retd) Anil Athale is coordinator for the Pune-based Initiative for Peace and Disarmament

[vasu raya]

CSI Mumbai: How the Americans helped crack the Lashkar code

Four days after the terror assault on Mumbai ended, an unmarked C-130 Hercules landed at Santa Cruz airport. Its cargo: a combined FBI and CIA team of a dozen forensic experts from the United States.

A half-dozen Indian and US sources helped piece together how the US and India joined forces to carry out the ultimate crime scene investigation.

The US experts had been dispatched by their president George W Bush after a request for technical assistance by India on the second day of the attack. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh avoided asking for direct US intervention, but Indian experts were aware they lacked the ability to secure a trail of evidence which they knew would go back to Pakistan.

Also, using a US forensic team would automatically make the case to Washington of Islamabad’s complicity.

Not everyone on the Indian side was pleased. The then Mumbai police chief, Hassan Gafoor, complained about turning to the US for assistance. Gafoor, criticised by the Pradhan committee for his passivity during the 26/11 attack, was slapped down by New Delhi.

The US team moved into the Four Seasons Hotel, taking up an entire floor. As they set up a secure satellite communications link back to the US, an Intelligence Bureau counterterrorism official flew down from Delhi to coordinate with them.

AN Roy, director general of Mumbai police at the time, met them the first day. “They had a long list of requests: sites to go to, information on US nationals who had been victims, and so on.” A Mumbai police officer was deputed to help them.

The US team collected information from all the places attacked by the five Lashkar-e-Taiba teams. They collected the serial numbers from the AK-47s and grenades used by the assailants as well as the DNA samples of all the terrorists and the US victims. “They also took samples from Ajmal Kasab, the sole surviving Lashkar attacker," says Deven Bharti, then additional commissioner of the Mumbai crime branch.

The US team stayed over 10 days before returning home. They used their communications link to confer with their bomb data centre in Virginia. An Indian official remembers that the CIA personnel had come from the San Francisco office.

The FBI began to produce results quickly. They determined that the terrorists had used Arges grenades, a defunct Austrian brand – whose only remaining factory was in Pakistan.

The US tracked down the VoIP that the terrorists had used to talk to their handlers in Pakistan to a service provider based in New Jersey. The US also tracked the payments, sent via MoneyGram and Western Union, to Peshawar and Italy. The Italian payment, as the chargesheet later noted, was made to a Pakistani passport holder. The Americans also tracked the email trail of the VoIP account holder.

In February, an Indian team went to the US with more forensic material. They carried three of the five Maglem GPS handsets used by the Lashkar teams. The secrets of the other two had been unravelled by the Indian police. But these three, says Bharti, were damaged by fire. An FBI laboratory in Virginia reconstructed the handsets. “They used software to get out the tracking information. This clearly showed the Lashkar men’s path from Karachi, across the waters, to Mumbai. It even had a bit where they drove through Karachi at the start to test the device,” says Bharti.

One of the handsets had the various targets including the Leopold Café and the hotels, as laid out by the Lashkar scout David Headley, carefully marked.

This was so beyond Indian forensic ability at the time that it was cited in the official chargesheet: “These GPS handsets were sent to the FBI laboratory and the details of the data recovered…”

The serial numbers of the Yamaha outboard motor used to power the dinghy that the Lashkar teams used for the last four to five miles before landing in Mumbai were also tracked by the FBI to a firm in Pakistan.

In some cases, say Indian officials, the FBI was used to corroborate evidence that the Indian police had determined themselves, such as the provenance of the terrorists’ Nokia phones.

Bharti and other Indian officials say that a part of the reason for using the US agencies are lacunae in Indian criminal law. Namely, that the Indian police are barred from carrying out investigations overseas and the testimony of an Indian police official, without backup from witnesses, is not accepted by Indian judges. Even to ask for overseas assistance, the Indian police must get a letter rogatory issued by an Indian court. “It doesn’t matter that we are receiving help from a friendly country,” says Bharti. “But for the Indian police to be able to go overseas and do what the FBI did here would be on my wish list.”

Not everyone believes the US was completely forthcoming. A former RAW official who had been involved in the case says Washington declined to follow the trail of “Javed Iqbal”, holder of Pakistani passport number KC092481, who had paid for the VoIP service used by the terrorists through a Western Union office in Brescia, Italy. He says Iqbal’s identity remains a mystery “because of American intransigence".

[saumitra_j]

From the Indian Express

One morning in January 2009, Ajmal Kasab, the lone terrorist captured alive during the November 26, 2008 attacks, told Investigating Officer Ramesh Mahale, "It has been eight years and you haven't hanged Afzal Guru, I have enough time."
Mahale, 56, then a Senior Inspector with the Crime Branch, was surprised. "I was unaware of the number of years Guru had been waiting. Further questioning revealed that Kasab had not only undergone physical training, but also knew enough about our legal landscape," he recalls, five years after the Mumbai attacks.

On the night of the 26/11 attacks, Mahale was outside Hotel Trident, co-ordinating rescue operations, when he was sent to Nair Hospital. His brief was clear: a "fidayeen" had been picked up alive and he had to interrogate him. Recalling the journey to the hospital, Mahale remembers how he kept repeating the word "fidayeen" to himself.

"I began thinking of conviction and all the things essential to hang a terrorist... I often tell everyone that this country owes a huge debt to Tukaram Omble (the police officer who helped nab Kasab)," he says. His first impression of Kasab was "ekdum chikna, ekdum smart, but phir ekdum bachkanda (fair, smart but childish).

Having worked in terror cases before, Mahale knew that "direct evidence" was everything. "We needed proof. Aur Pakistan ko ungli karne ke liye, pehli baar kuch haath laga tha (we got the chance to blame Pakistan for the first time)," he says. Chairs were arranged next to Kasab's bed and for over three hours, he spoke to him. "You could see the level of training from the first day itself. He spoke without fear, and there was a sense of total surrender in his words. His eyes never wavered," recalls Mahale.

Within the first few hours, Mahale called for an age determination test to confirm that Kasab was an adult. "Usually, ward boys prepare the documents in such tests. I asked for a doctor. I thought the trial would be difficult and how much evidence could a ward boy give," he says.

For the next three months, Mahale met Kasab everyday, till the end of his police custody in February 2009. Mahale became the face of the investigation for Kasab, so much so that he was picked to escort the terrorist on his last journey, from Mumbai's Arthur Road jail to Pune's Yerawada Jail.

During the months that Kasab was in police custody, every precaution was taken to ensure his safety. "Just minutes before lunch hour, a home-cooked tiffin of an officer would be picked and given to him. This was never planned in advance as we didn't want to take any chance," says Mahale, adding that Kasab was only given mineral water.

"There is always a good cop-bad cop technique. In his case, we didn't beat him up, as he spoke. But during his interrogation, there would be a bad cop, and then me. Everything was a strategy," recalls Mahale.

On Eid, Mahale even gave Kasab a salwar-kameez. "I told him it was Eid and he could wear it during prayers... That was our strategy to win him. Besides, what else can you give a man whose end was near," says Mahale.

A team of 98 officers worked to build the "tightest probe", with 12 separate cases made. The Crime Branch prepared a docket of 350 pages based on Kasab's interrogation.

He recalls asking Kasab about his farewell from Pakistan. "It was the only time I sensed fear in him. He said (Lashkar leader) Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi's last words to them were: 'don't come back alive, but more importantly don't get arrested at any cost'," says Mahale. While he missed his mother, Kasab never spoke well of his father. Before leaving Pakistan, "they were given Rs 6,000... they all bought boots," says Mahale.

In late 2012, Mahale got a call from the trial court one morning. "I wasn't told anything, but I knew the time had come. On November 12, Police Commisioner Satyapal Singh briefed me in his chamber. He wanted Kasab to be taken from Mumbai to Pune. He wanted a team of men to be prepared," says Mahale.

On the evening of November 19, 2012, Joint Commissioner of Police Sadanand Date called him and told him to arrange for an extra set of clothes. He made a quick call to his wife. "I served a long stint in the Anti-Corruption Bureau, so she was aware of the procedures," he says.

At around midnight, Kasab was woken up and taken to a vehicle. There were six vehicles in the convoy — all Scorpios with tinted glasses. Kasab was made to sit in the middle seat, with two jail personnel on either side. Mahale sat in the front seat, next to the driver. Through the journey, the convoy maintained a pre-decided speed.

Their instructions were clear: no phone calls from anyone except the police commissioner, joint commissioner (law and order) and two special ranks. "In hindsight, I feel that it was a test, as I was asked not to take any calls from my immediate seniors. The deputy commissioner of police (crime), additional commissioner and reader of the joint commissioner of police (crime) kept calling me. But I didn't pick up any of the calls," he says.

Mahale did not speak to Kasab during the journey. "He was intelligent. The only regret I have is that despite our questioning skills, he named Abu Jundal in an open court... We have Jundal in our records due to technical surveillance, where his voice has been captured and evidence placed, but never from Kasab," says Mahale.

After they reached Yerawada Jail, at about 3:30 am, the vehicles were taken to a far corner. "I escorted him till where I could. Before we parted, I told him, 'Afzal Guru ko aat saal lage, tere liye sirf char (Afzal Guru's case has taken eight years, yours took just four years)'. He just smiled, walked a step and turned. 'Bas aap logon ki jeet hai (It is your victory),' he said," says Mahale, who has since taken voluntary retirement

[saumitra_j]

From the Times of India:

America sacrificed Mumbai to keep Headley in play

Five years on, this is what we now know. A valued CIA proxy, who infiltrated the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), a banned Pakistani Islamist outfit, planned the Mumbai attacks in which 166 people were killed, and more than 300 injured. David Headley, an American citizen, conceived, scoped and ran supplies for the terrorist 'swarm' operation, so called because several independent units simultaneously hit their enemy in multiple locations, coming out of nowhere, multiplying fear and panic.

Headley selected Mumbai, India's commercial capital, as the theatre of operations while acting as a 'prized counter-terrorism asset' for the United States, according to senior officers in the Joint Terrorism Task Force, who described his covert career as running for eleven years. When the LeT's ten-man suicide squad sailed from a creek in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi, at dawn on 22 November 2008, they navigated towards a landing spot in Mumbai, marked on a GPS provided by the Washington DC born maverick. Reaching the world's fourth largest metropolis four nights later, LeT's team fanned out, following routes plotted by Headley over an intense two-year period of surveillance . Shortly before 10pm, the gunmen shot dead tourists at the Leopold Cafe, massacred more than 60 Indian commuters at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) railway station, and then laid siege to a Jewish centre and two five-star hotels, including the luxurious Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai's most famous landmark. Ten men would keep the mega-city burning for more than three days.

This month sees the fifth anniversary of the Mumbai attacks, and the most complete survey to date of former and serving intelligence agents, diplomats, police, and survivors from 12 countries, reveals that the CIA repeatedly tipped off their counterparts in India to an imminent attack, using intelligence derived from their prize asset Headley. What they did not reveal was that their source, a public school educated Pakistani-American dilettante and entrepreneur, was allowed to remain in place even as the attack was realized. His continuing proximity to the terrorist outfit would eventually lead to a showdown between Washington and New Delhi.

Researching 'The Siege', we learned that Indian intelligence agents accused their US counterparts of protecting Headley and leaving him in the field, despite the imminent threat to Mumbai. Irate Indian officials claimed that Headley's Mumbai plot was allowed to run on by his US controllers, as to spool it in would have jeopardized his involvement in another critical US operation . Having infiltrated the LeT, Headley also won access to al-Qaida, making him the only US citizen in the field who might be able to reach Osama bin Laden. Three years before America's most wanted terrorist was finally run to ground in Abbottabad, this was an opportunity that some in the US intelligence community were not willing to give up.

Phone and email intercepts seen by us confirm how Headley had become trusted by Ilyas Kashmiri, a former LeT commander and senior al-Qaida operative, who led an al-Qaida military affiliate, known as Brigade 313. Based in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, Ilyas Kashmiri was, at one point, considered as a potential successor to Osama bin Laden until his death in June 2011.

In 2009, several months after the Mumbai atrocity, agents from the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), India's foreign intelligence agency, confronted the CIA with these claims, according to accounts seen by us. India is said to have accused the US of pursuing 'a narrow self-interest' and having some responsibility in the deaths in Mumbai.

However, the CIA stood firm, one senior agent claiming that 'Indian incompetence' was to blame for the attack. In 2006, the US had warned India that the LeT was forming a suicide squad to attack India from the sea. More than 25 increasingly detailed bulletins followed that named Mumbai as the prime objective, and identified several targets, including the Taj hotel. Additional bulletins suggested that a team of highly trained gunmen using AK47s and RDX, military-grade explosives, would seek to prolong the attack by taking hostages and establishing a stronghold, before a final shoot-out that they hoped would be broadcast live around the world on TV.

Some of these bulletins were eventually distilled into notices that reached the police patrolling Mumbai . However, the assessments were 'ignored or downplayed' until July 2008 when a senior police officer, a Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) with responsibility for security in the district of South Mumbai where the Taj was located, took action . On 12 August 2008, DCP Vishwas Nangre Patil spent nine hours with the Taj's security staff, writing a report to his seniors that concluded: 'Overall, the [Taj] management has done very little to adapt the hotel to the changing security environment in the city.' When a truck bomb devastated the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, on 20 September 2008, Patil drew up an urgent list of enhanced security measures for the Taj, including snipers on the roof, blast barriers on the driveway and armed guards on all doors. Although security was tightened as a result, most of these measures were withdrawn again after DCP Patil went on leave in the second week of October 2008.

David Headley was a bizarre mix of Eastern and Western cultures and made for a near-perfect mole. His mother was Serrill Headley, a socialite and adventuress from Maryland, whose great-aunt had funded women's rights and Albert Einstein's research . His father was Syed Gilani, a renowned radio broadcaster and diplomat from Lahore, who had been seconded to Voice of America. When Headley was born in Washington DC in 1960, he was initially named Daood Saleem Gilani. Within a year, the family had relocated to Pakistan, where Gilani was brought up as a Muslim and schooled at an exclusive military academy. After his parents divorced and Serrill returned to the US to open a bar in Philadelphia, named, suitably, the Khyber Pass, Gilani, aged 17, rejoined her. He lived with her in a flat above the Khyber Pass — and soon immersed himself in the American way of life. Later he moved to the Upper West Side in New York, where he opened a video rental shop, Fliks.

By 1984, Gilani was a six-foot-two American boy, with a fair complexion, broad shoulders and an impressive mop of curly blond hair. Only his distinctively mismatched eyes — one blue one brown —hinted at his mixed heritage and muddled ancestry. Dressed in crumpled Armani jeans, a leather jacket slung over his shoulder, and a £10,000 Rolex Submariner poking out of his cuff, he was already looking for more lucrative opportunities than video rental. That year, he used his dual identities to smuggle half a kilogram of heroin from Pakistan's tribal areas to New York, selling it through the video store. When German customs officers caught him four years later at Frankfurt airport en-route to Philadelphia, with two kilograms of heroin, Gilani informed on his co-conspirators to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). While, his accomplices were jailed for between eight and ten years, he became a paid DEA informer, infiltrating Pakistan's drug syndicates . Some US agents warned that Gilani was too volatile to be trusted, and in 1997, he was arrested again in New York for trafficking. He offered another deal, suggesting he infiltrate Islamist radicals who were starting to worry the CIA and FBI.

A letter put before the court reveals prosecutors conceded that while Gilani might have supplied up to fifteen kilograms of heroin worth £947,000, he had also been 'reliable and forthcoming' with the agency about 'a range of issues' . Sentenced to fifteen months in the low-security Fort Dix prison, New Jersey, while his co-conspirator received four years in a high-security jail, he was freed after only nine months. In August 1999, one year after hundreds had been killed in simultaneous Al-Qaeda bomb attacks on American embassies in Africa, he returned to Pakistan, his ticket paid for by the US government.

{So its way before 9/11 attack in 2001!}


By 2006, Daood had joined the inner circle of Lashkar-e-Toiba, which had been proscribed by the UN five years earlier. Coming up with the plan to attack Mumbai and launch LeT onto the international stage, he changed his name to David Headley and applied for a new US passport. He would use it to travel incognito to India on seven surveillance trips, selecting targets in Mumbai which he photographed using a camera he borrowed from his mother-in-law .

Headley was chaotic and his Mumbai plan was almost undermined by his private life. By 2008, he was married to three women, none of who knew of the others' existence, two living apart in Pakistan and one in New York. The wife in the US, however, grew suspicious after he championed the 9/11 attackers, reporting him to the authorities. Shortly before the Mumbai operation, his cousin Alex Headley, a soldier in the US Army also considered reporting him after Headley announced that he was naming his newborn son Osama and described him as 'my little terrorist' . His Pakistani half-brother Danyal Gilani, who worked as a press officer for the Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, disowned him.

Eventually, Headley's mother informed on him to the FBI. Her son was only ever interested in himself, she warned, arguing that his selfishness was born out of his lack of a sense of self. None of the complainants heard anything back, with Serrill Headley, who died ten months before Mumbai, confiding in a friend that her son 'must have worked for the US government' .

Five years on, with American officials continuing to remain silent over Headley (and the conflict of interest that enabled him to run amok in the field), and with New Delhi still prevented from accessing him, the full truth about Washington's culpability in 26/11 remains muddied. In India, where no postmortem of any depth has been carried out into Mumbai, the scale of the intelligence failings — the inability of IB and RAW to develop the leads passed them by the CIA and others — will also never be fully exposed.

The more I learn the more WTFs come out

[kish]

cooperation with gulf intelligence agencies? May be this is the reason why Home Minister Shinde is overconfident that Dawood would be captured, whenever dawood set foot in any of the gulf countries. But, pakis would never let Dawood go out of pakisatan. Because he knows too much about them.,

Q&A: 'India warned 26 times' before Mumbai

India is observing the fifth anniversary of 2008 Mumbai attacks, in which over 160 people were killed by a group of armed men in almost three days of mayhem.
Spotlight
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Now a recent book, The Siege: The Attack on the Taj, authored by British investigative journalists Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, offers an insight into what led to the Mumbai attacks, lapses on the Indian side, the role of the CIA’s proxy elements and the Pakistan-based armed group Lashkar-e-Toiba’s (LeT).

Both authors specialise in investigative journalism and have previously written a controversial book, The Meadow: Kashmir 1995, a meticulous account of a ruthless kidnapping that paved the way for the 9/11 attacks on the US.

In an interview with Al Jazeera’s Baba Umar, Adrian Levy talks about the Mumbai attacks, the Pakistani plot to it, the US role and the credibility of Indian intelligence agencies.

Al Jazeera: First The Meadow, now The Siege. These non-fiction thrillers have come back to back in a span of just a few years. Can you tell us about the research process involved in your latest book?

Adrian Levy: "It's a laborious process of hanging facts and characters on a giant exoskeleton. We're both on our hands and knees piecing things together when we see each other. The truth, or versions of it, is compelling and addictive. These kinds of stories require you to reach out and not to censor yourself. South Asia is mostly the common denominator and that's where we have spent so many years."

Al Jazeera: Can you take us to Pakistan where the attack was planned? Your argument is the attacks were ‘deliberate’ and supported by Pakistan's ISI. Who in ISI planned it? And did the government in Pakistan have any clue about it?

Levy: "We spent a good deal of time in Pakistan and there is no evidence that the government there was culpable. In anyway, they were caught out as was everyone else. Lashkar's complex relationship with its mentors in the ISI is more fraught. The outfit is packed with soldiers and spies, but how many are serving and who is influential.

Although created as a creature of covert foreign policy, Lashkar was disintegrating after the Lal Masjid raid in 2007, when Pakistani forces stormed a mosque in Islamabad, to end a siege there. A significant section was against the old council, and anti-Pak security establishment. A small section remained loyal. Mumbai was mooted as a band-aid, it seems. It appealed to the old guard as India remained the target, and to the new guard as the West too could be targeted. Jews. Americans. Europeans.

"But even though individuals in the ISI seem to have attached themselves to the Mumbai plot, it is less easy to say that the institution was involved."

Al Jazeera: You claim India had prior information about the attacks. Who in India knew about it?

Levy: "There was a clear trail of warnings. We found 26 in all. They were very detailed. RAW [Research and Analysis Wing, the key external intelligence agency] and the Intelligence Bureau knew Mumbai was being targeted and that Lashkar was the author. They knew which targets were being cased too. And that a seal landing was likely. But then the US knew a good deal about 9/11 and could not prevent it, and several of the 7/7 bombers were on the British watch list but evaded capture."

Al Jazeera: The intelligence source inside Lashkar-e-Toiba had given the tip-off. What was the level of this source? Does it mean Lashkar is no longer impenetrable?

Levy: "Lashkar has always been a leaky ship. David Headley penetrated LeT and did it for the US, his supposed clients. He also seems to have done it for himself, as he found within himself a hatred of the West as he embraced Islam.

"Headley's information was stripped of identifications and dispatched to India. Would these gobbets have been taken more seriously if India had known the source?"

Al Jazeera: The book also speaks of the presence of a Lashkar super-agent ‘Honey Bee’ in India? Is ‘Honey Bee’ an agent within India’s RAW, IB or what?

Levy: "The ISI claimed to have a super-agent. Was it classic counter espionage? A red herring to make Mumbai appear to come from within and not without? Certainly some training materials found in Karachi seem to have stemmed from India which gave Lashkar an insight into Indian counter hostage strategy. The NSG (Indian National Security Guards) said the same when they confronted the LeT squad in the tower."

Al Jazeera: Has India tried hard to expose this mole?

Levy: "We don't know. India was warned by a Gulf intelligence agency." (this is strange, which country could it be??)

Al Jazeera: Hafiz Saeed of Jama'at-ud-Dawa in Pakistan has always denied having any role in the attacks. India blames him directly and wants Pakistan to act? The Pakistani courts have not found anything incriminating against him? Where does he fit in all this?

Levy: "Hafiz Saeed is the emir of the spiritual wing in the same way Sinn Fein is the fig leaf for the IRA. He undoubtedly knew, but being the consummate political animal that he is, he was careful to conceal his presence and there is no hard evidence linking him apart from hearsay. However, LeT is a disciplined outfit and it is inconceivable that Hafiz Saeed did not know. But this is not enough to convict him in court."

Al Jazeera: The Mumbai attack was meticulously planned; the masterminds mixed technology with terror, reconnaissance was done and what not. What do we know about the nine other attackers who came with Ajmal Kasab?

Levy: "Nine of the 10 were similar; peasant boys from dysfunctional families in Eastern and Southern Punjab [in Pakistan]. Some grew up on the Indian border. Others in its shadow. Most of those who made the final team were brought up in areas where Jihad as an aspiration provides the only hope of lifting the populace out of misery."

Al Jazeera: Lashkar-e-Toiba fighters have mostly fought in Kashmir. They took the fight to Mumbai in 2008. Are you among those who believe Kashmir and Mumbai is linked?

Levy: "Lashkar had split after 9/11 and a splinter was going global, having moved to the UK to secure new funding and cadre. It was doing the same across Europe and had even targeted an Australian nuclear site. This was known and the information passed to the White house in 2007. The Bush Administration rejected the dossier as Lashkar was seen as the creature of the Pakistani military, and to attack it would distance the US from its ally, the Pakistani military. Nothing was done.

"The Kashmir campaign represented the interests of only one faction within Lashkar. And so the linkage between Kashmir and Mumbai is that the Mumbai operation was conceived to enable Lashkar to continue and the ISI to wield it as part of its Kashmir policy."

[ramana]

Its all bokwas.

India had its own game going.

We need to compare and contrast three characters:

Daoud Gilani, Abu Jundal and Ilyas Kashmiri

Say in a tabular form along with significant events timeline.

[Prem]

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/intervi ... epage=true
A mole in Mumbai helped 26/11 attackers’

Former Union Home Secretary Ram Pradhan had led the two-man inquiry into the administration’s response to the 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai. Five years after the attack, he spoke to Priyanka Kakodkar and made a new revelation. He said that the R.D. Pradhan Committee had informed the then Home Minister P. Chidambaram about the possibility of a mole in Mumbai who had assisted in the terror attack. However, he does not know what action was taken on it. He also said the central intelligence agencies did not cooperate with the committee. Excerpts: -----

Political fingerprints of Congressi neta/ show up on many incidents this kind .

[ramana]

When Pradhan committee made its report 3 months after the attack there was no inkling of Daoud Gilani who was the insider/mole who guided the attack. He had quite bit of help from underworld and actors.

[ramana]

X-post....

Why is Bruce Riedel huffing and puffing now??

There is always a catch with this guy......


26/11 was meant to start India-Pak war: ex-CIA analyst

Firstpost India
26/11 was meant to start India-Pak war: ex-CIA analyst

The 26/11 Mumbai terror attack was intended to change dramatically the future of South Asia, perhaps even by provoking a war between rising nuclear powers India and Pakistan, according to a top counter-terrorism expert. Bruce Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst, who has advised four US presidents on South Asian issues, says he had pointed this out to then President-elect Barack Obama and his transition team at the time in several briefings. Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taeba group (LeT) had carefully chosen the targets and meticulously researched them over several years, he wrote in The Daily Beast, an American news reporting and opinion website AFP. AFP. "They received considerable assistance in doing so from two sources-the Pakistani intelligence service, called the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate or ISI, and Al Qaeda." "Each had its own agenda for the operation. But the targets were the same - Indians, Americans, and Jews - the targets of the global jihad started by Al Qaeda in the late 1990s," Riedel wrote. Describing the November 2008 attack as "the most important terror attack since 9/11" he pointed out that the "10 terrorists' tactics have been copied by others since - for example, just weeks ago in Nairobi." But "perhaps the most shocking element of the Mumbai attack was the role played by David Coleman Headley, an American citizen of Pakistani descent, in the intelligence collection that preceded the attack," Riedel wrote. Born Daood Sayed Gilani in Washington, DC, in 1960, Headley changed his name at the behest of LeT to hide his Pakistani identity when travelling abroad. In his guilty confession, Headley, Riedel noted, acknowledged "the raid also was planned with active ISI involvement at every stage. At each of his meetings in Pakistan, he said he met with ISI officers as well as the LeT terror leaders." "Sometimes the ISI gave him particular assignments separate from what the LeT asked; for example, tasking him with taking photos of an Indian nuclear facility near Mumbai," Riedel said. Yet "the Pakistani mastermind of the Mumbai plot, LeT leader Hafiz Saeed, remains free in Pakistan, where he continues to be a darling of the ISI and regularly calls for more attacks on India and America," Riedel wrote noting "Five years after Mumbai, justice has yet to be served."

Indian Foreign Secretary Mrs Singh is in Duplicity to ask for hand over of David Headley to India.
Hence this pre-emptive article by Reidel to point fingers at TSP. While DCH was doing all that he was on US govt payroll and immunity from his past crimes as an agent who was cooperating.

Indian thinking is US was using DCH as agent provacatuer to start the Indo-Pak war to get relief in Af-Pak turmoil.

[SSridhar]

Two 26/11 Key Witnesses Quizzd in Rawalpindi - Meena Menon, The Hindu

The trial in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks case resumed on Wednesday and defence cross-examined two key witnesses at a special court room in Adyala Jail in Rawalpindi.

Special Public Prosecutor Chaudhry Muhammed Azhar told The Hindu over the phone that the bank manager of the Muslim Commercial Bank in Islamabad was cross-examined. He testified earlier that Rs. 2,00,000 was transferred to the account of Amad Ameen Sadiq, an accused in the case. Mr. Azhar said this money was to be used for the terror operation.

Police inspector Mohammed Ashraf was also cross-examined by the defence. He was present at the time of arrest of the four accused in the case in February 2009 and was also responsible for the recovery of some material from them. Those arrested include Wajid Mazhar Iqbal and Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi.

The Anti-Terrorism Court has decided that the case will be heard every Wednesday from now on. Mr. Azhar said that the two witnesses cross-examined were new and the prosecution had asked the court to summon six more new witnesses next week.

All this drama is to entice a Man Mohan Singh visit to Islamabad and to ward off Obama's pressure on Nawaz regarding slow pace of the trial.

See here for a chronology of court drama in Pakistan

[svenkat]

'Raju' was banned by N^3 for saying something that was construed as incitement of violence against US citizens.Raju insisted that there was a foreign power other than pakhanasthan that was behind 26/11.He insisted pakis did not have the 'chutzpah'.Ramanaji is openly endorsing something similar.

Everyone in BRF knew that West wanted an Indo-Pak war which would finish off pakhanisthan and also leave India crippled.Dr MMS has spoken of the great strain and stress he had to face following 26/11 and how GOI had to calibrate its response fter 26/11

[chetak]

The ISI, the CIA and the Mumbai attacks

December 26, 2013 10:45 IST

When then ISI director Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha visited Washington, DC for a meeting with CIA Director Michael Hayden, he admitted that the planners of the Mumbai attacks included some 'retired Pakistani officers' and that the attackers had 'ISI links, but this had not been an authorised ISI operation.'

Rediff.com's Aziz Haniffa reports from Washington, DC.

A National Security Group commando during the Chabad House operation, November 28, 2008, day three of the Mumbai attacks.Husain Haqqani, Pakistani ambassador to the United States from 2008 to 2011, says in his book Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding that Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte excluded all officials from a meeting with Pakistan's then national security advisor Major General Mahmud Durrani to address the national security advisor and Haqqani in private.

'Although Negroponte was known as a friend of Pakistan,' Haqqani writes, 'on this occasion his language reflected a degree of agitation, which was something unusual for a diplomat of Negroponte's experience. "Why do we sense a degree of guilt in Pakistan's conduct?" he asked deliberately.'

Negroponte, Haqqani writes, wondered 'why Pakistan refused access to the LeT's planners it had arrested. Was it concerned that they might speak of their relations with the ISI?'

'It is time for Pakistan to come clean,' Haqqani recalls Negroponte as saying.

When Durrani said Pakistan's courts would determine the legality of requests for access, Haqqani remembers Negroponte had exploded, saying, "We know about Pakistan's courts. They order the hanging of elected prime ministers when the army asks them and don't look at legal niceties."

Haqqani says if Negroponte's tone at that meeting was agitated, then US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's tone was downright angry: 'She began with the words, "I will not sugarcoat anything I say to you today",' Haqqani writes in his book.

He recalls Dr Rice telling Durrani and him "There is a serious problem with Pakistan" and that there was "clear evidence" in relation to the Mumbai attacks.

While acknowledging that there was "no direct link between the attackers and the Pakistan government," America's top diplomat had argued that "When people have been trained and intelligence operatives have relations with people who have been trained for such attacks, then there is a connection".'

Dr Rice, Haqqani notes, also said Pakistani should stop asking for proof and stop claiming that there is no proof: "This does not serve you. What you think and what the whole world thinks are two different things".'

'According to Rice,' Haqqani writes, 'Pakistan had all the information it needed to shut terrorist operations down forever. After all, the ISI knew who it had trained and equipped for terrorism.'

She had warned that Pakistan would be 'consumed' if it did not go after jihadi groups, Haqqani adds.

She also told Durrani that "focusing your energies on an Indian threat that does not exist is a colossal mistake," and that Pakistan had to "make a strategic decision that association with terrorists has to come to an end."

'It seemed that she felt the need to convey her strongly held views before she ended her tenure. She had been diplomatic with Pakistani officials for eight years, but now she wanted to get it out,' the book says.

Haqqani remembers that despite Durrani's claims that the Inter Service Intelligence's links with the LeT had been broken in 2002, Dr Rice had dismissed the denials, instead saying, "There is material support to the LeT and the LeT has just recently killed six Americans".'

'I sent a detailed account of the Rice-Durrani conversation to Islamabad,' Haqqani writes, and had remarked that 'as I have said in many telegrams since becoming ambassador, the view from Washington is very different from the way issues and matters are being perceived in Islamabad.'

Soon after Durrani's trip, the US shared intelligence with Pakistan proving the LeT's culpability, Haqqani's book says.

Subsequently, when then ISI director Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha visited Washington, DC for a meeting with Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Hayden, he admitted that the planners of the Mumbai attacks included some 'retired Pakistani officers' and that the attackers had 'ISI links, but this had not been an authorised ISI operation.'

Taking a swipe at General Pasha, Haqqani writes that when the ISI chief later came to tea at the Pakistan embassy, 'I took the opportunity to share with Pasha the names of ISI officers who had been egging on journalists back home to attack me as an American agent. He promised to "take care of the problem" just as he had 'promised Hayden to deal with the fallout of the Mumbai attacks.'

The CIA later received 'reliable intelligence' that the ISI was directly involved in the training for Mumbai attacks, Haqqani notes, and then Pakistan prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani 'fired Durrani, possibly at the behest of some ISI officers, for publicly acknowledging (captured Mumbai attacker Ajmal) Kasab's Pakistani citizenship.'

'Thus, the government had lost one of its main interlocutors with the Americans,' Haqqani writes. 'The position of national security adviser was never filled again. This left discussion with the United States on counter-terrorism issues solely in the hands of the ISI.'

[ramana]

What is the use of recounting US anger at TSP when they did nothing with it?