Internal Security Watch

[Rye]

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/young ... ry/385113/

The other face is more troubling. An RSS leader recently told me ruefully that the RSS was finding it hard to attract young people. “Woh sab to Bajrang Dal ya Raj Thackeray ke paas ja rahein hain, ya phir Gurjjar type agitation mein lag jaate hain.” We are in dire straits indeed when we begin to feel that the RSS of the old days was something you could understand: at least it had some connections to a larger spirit of service than what is replacing it. In a strange way this insight also captures another, more disturbing sociological reality. Extend this argument to the attraction of SIMI, the fascination with violence and terrorism now spreading amongst some sections of the Hindu youth, the continued attraction of pathologically violent Naxalism. The extent of these trends is hard to know, and we all have our favourite theories of what explains this.

BR's favorite theory is of course, the "fake liberals"....no matter what one's favorite theory, the fact remains.

[Gerard]

Purohit says Muslim groups helped him bomb SIMI office in Malegaon

Lt Colonel Shrikant Purohit, who shocked the country by turning out to be the first serving officer to have been allegedly involved in a terror plot, has now left the investigating agencies completely baffled by the statements he made during the narco-test.

[Gerard]

Maoists threaten Lalgarh war

Maoists today threatened an armed resistance in West Midnapore’s Lalgarh where tribals have been protesting police raids and detentions following a blast that missed the chief minister by minutes.

[Singha]

IBN

New Delhi: The Samajwadi Party has announced that the party will give Rs 10 lakh to the Jamia Millia Islamia students who were arrested on the charge of being allegedly involved in the September 13 blasts in Delhi.

Samajwadi Party General Secretary, Amar Singh, made the announcement on Thursday evening while attending a meeting of Jamia Old Boys Association on the issue of Jamia Nagar shootout.

“We have decided to provide support to Jamia students arrested on the charges of their alleged involvement in the blasts,” said Amar Singh.

Mohammad Shakeel, a second-year MA student, and Zia-ur-Rehman, a third-year BA student, were arrested from New Delhi on September 21 for their alleged involvement in serial blasts.

Delhi Police have said they, along with 10 others arrested, were part of the Indian Mujahideen that has claimed responsibility for the serial bombings in the national Capital as well as other cities in recent months.

Amar Singh also said that atrocities on minorities in the Congress ruled states have put a big question mark on the secular character of the Congress.

“Killings of young boys in Delhi in the name of terrorism and burning alive of people in Adilabad, such atrocities on the minorities in the states in which Congress is in power is putting a big question mark on the secular character of the Congress,” he said.

Communal violence and subsequent incidents had claimed 10 lives in Andhra Pradesh's Adilabad district in October.

“We had organised the meeting to discuss the issue of the way the image of the university is being tarnished. In this meeting Amar Singh made the announcement of providing financial help to the students of Jamia university arrested on the charges of alleged involvement in the blasts,” President of Jamia Old Boys Association, Javed Aalam, said.

Samajwadi Party Parliamentarians, Jaya Prada and Kamal Akhter, were also present at the meeting. Kamal Akhter is a former student of the varsity.

Two alleged terrorists were gunned down in Jamia Nagar Sep 19 followed by subsequent arrests by the Delhi and the Uttar Pradesh police for those suspected to be involved in the September 13 Delhi serial bombings, in which 26 people were killed.

[Avinash R]

Assistant pilot in iaf on poll duty dead in naxal attack in chattisgarh, name mustafa ali.

नक्सली हमले में सहायक पायलट की मौत
Nov 14, 07:25 pm

जगदलपुर। छत्तीसगढ़ के नक्सल प्रभावित बस्तर संभाग के बीजापुर जिले में शुक्रवार को नक्सलियों द्वारा किए गए हमले में मतदान कार्य में लगे एक हेलीकाप्टर के सहायक पायलट की मृत्यु हो गई। बस्तर रेंज के पुलिस महानिरीक्षक एएन उपाध्याय ने बताया कि एयर फोर्स का हेलीकाप्टर दक्षिण बस्तर के बीजापुर जिले के पीडिया गांव के मतदान केंद्र में मतदान कर्मियों को लेने गया था।

उन्होंने बताया कि हेलीकाप्टर ने उड़ान भरी ही थी तभी नक्सलियों ने गोलिया चला दी जिससे सहायक पायलट मुस्तफा अली की मृत्यु हो गई। यह घटना पामेड थाना क्षेत्र में हुई है। हेलीकाप्टर जगदलपुर पहुंच गया है। उल्लेखनीय है कि छत्तीसगढ में आज विधानसभा चुनाव के पहले चरण के तहत बस्तर संभाग की 12 विधानसभा क्षेत्रों में मतदान हुआ है।

[munna]

Assistant pilot in iaf on poll duty dead in naxal attack in chattisgarh, name mustafa ali.

नक्सली हमले में सहायक पायलट की मौत
Nov 14, 07:25 pm

जगदलपुर। छत्तीसगढ़ के नक्सल प्रभावित बस्तर संभाग के बीजापुर जिले में शुक्रवार को नक्सलियों द्वारा किए गए हमले में मतदान कार्य में लगे एक हेलीकाप्टर के सहायक पायलट की मृत्यु हो गई। बस्तर रेंज के पुलिस महानिरीक्षक एएन उपाध्याय ने बताया कि एयर फोर्स का हेलीकाप्टर दक्षिण बस्तर के बीजापुर जिले के पीडिया गांव के मतदान केंद्र में मतदान कर्मियों को लेने गया था।

उन्होंने बताया कि हेलीकाप्टर ने उड़ान भरी ही थी तभी नक्सलियों ने गोलिया चला दी जिससे सहायक पायलट मुस्तफा अली की मृत्यु हो गई। यह घटना पामेड थाना क्षेत्र में हुई है। हेलीकाप्टर जगदलपुर पहुंच गया है। उल्लेखनीय है कि छत्तीसगढ में आज विधानसभा चुनाव के पहले चरण के तहत बस्तर संभाग की 12 विधानसभा क्षेत्रों में मतदान हुआ है।

Translation for non Hindi readers:

Jagdalpur: In the Naxalite affected Bastar division's District Bijapur a co-pilot of IAF chopper lost his life while on poll duty. As per IG police of Bastar range Mr A.N.Upadhyay the air force helicopter was in Bijapur district's Pidia village to bring back poll duty employees from the polling station.
He told that as soon as the chopper took off it came under firing from Naxal terrorists which led to the death of co pilot Mr Mustafa Ali. This incident took place in Pamed Thana area. Helicopter has reached Jagdalpur safely. It is pertinent to mention here that in the first phase of of polls polling took place in 12 seats of Bastar division of Chattisgarh.

[sum]

New Delhi: The Samajwadi Party has announced that the party will give Rs 10 lakh to the Jamia Millia Islamia students who were arrested on the charge of being allegedly involved in the September 13 blasts in Delhi.

Have to find the nearest wall to bang my head against....

Despite such netas, we have progressed so much...wonder we would have been if we had even 50% decent leaders in the country...

[Gerard]

IAF officer killed in naxalite attack on copter

[shyamd]

Cops framed 2 informers as terrorists: CBI

NEW DELHI: After spending nearly three years in jail, Irshad Ali and Muarif Quamar may finally taste freedom as Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has sought their discharge, saying they were framed by three Special Cell police officers of Delhi Police's counter-terrorism wing.

In its closure report submitted in the court of additional sessions judge S S Mohi, the probe agency concluded that Ali and Quamar were innocent and not, as alleged by Delhi police, Al-Badr terrorists. The agency has also recommended that the three cops who were part of the operation be booked for creating false evidence, lying under oath and other serious offences. The judge will consider CBI's plea on November 27. All three sub-inspector level policemen indicted by CBI are part of the elite anti-terror unit of Delhi Police headed by ACP Sanjeev Yadav.

The Delhi Police had claimed that two alleged Al-Badr terrorist were arrested by the special cell in February 2006 from Mubarak Chowk after a tip-off. Reportedly, the two were informers of Intelligence Bureau and Special Cell.

CBI sources said the report clearly points at a nexus between the IB and Special Cell in framing Qamar and Ali. They add that the report "conclusively proves'' that calls were made often to both Ali and Quamar from landline numbers of intelligence agencies, which prove the duo were informers. Apart from Delhi Police, an inspector from IB, Majid Din, has also been found involved in the abduction and illegal detention of the two Kashmiris, the CBI states in its report. The report also points out how RDX and arms were planted on both accused after they were picked up. The moot question, agency insiders say, is where did the cops get hold of such massive quantity of unaccounted ammunition to plant on the duo, as arms recovered from terrorists are strictly regulated.

The report also points out how no follow-up in J&K was done after arrest of both men and an NBW issued against two persons, who cops allege supplied the arms, returned unserved because it was sent to a wrong address in J&K. Moreover, neither workplace nor homes of the accused in Bhajanpura in Delhi were raided, making the agency suspect a cover-up operation.

CBI punched holes in the police version and concurred with claims made by Sufian Siddiqui, lawyer for the accused, that not a shred of evidence could be produced by Delhi Police to link Ali and Quamar to Al Badr. "No narco analysis was pressed for, no source was presented, there were no raids and no motive was established by Delhi Police in its chargesheet submitted in trial court,'' says Sufian.

Interestingly, one of the sub-inspectors named by the CBI won a President's Police medal this year. He, along with other officers, was rewarded for an encounter in 2006 near Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium in which a militant Abu Hamza was gunned down by special cell.

[Avinash R]

Apart from Delhi Police, an inspector from IB, Majid Din, has also been found involved..

and the foreign owned media like ndtv in india and western news agencies like bbc told us that there were no people belonging to the minority communities in indian intel agencies. Now this incident has indirectly exposed the lies of these foreign and foreign owned news channels. Shame on you liars.

[Avinash R]

Tripura alerts WB on possible terrorist attacks

Agartala, Nov 16 (UNI) The Tripura police have alerted its West Bengal counterparts on possible terrorist attacks in a few locations of the state, official sources here today said.

According to report, Inspector General of Police (Intelligence) B K Debbarma was informed by the BSF yesterday that a group of Bangladesh-based terrorists had been planning to strike in some important locations of West Bengal.

Mr Debbarma had also provided inputs on movements of anti-Indian forces in Bangladesh along with some other confessional statements of suspected international terrorist links.

[sum]

Anti-terror laws lose teeth in India: Official study

An official study of the provisions of existing anti-terror acts shows that they have been ‘diluted’ over time.An official study of the provisions of existing anti-terror acts shows that they have been ‘diluted’ over time.

An official study of the provisions of existing anti-terror acts shows that they have been ‘diluted’ over time.

New Delhi, November 16: : In what could be music to BJP's ears, an official study of the provisions of existing anti-terror acts shows that they have been ‘diluted’ over a period of time.

The fact that such laws have lost teeth comes to light when provisions of anti-terror laws in India are analysed and compared with similar laws in some other countries.

The comparison, drawn by the second Administrative Reforms Commission appointed by the Centre, shows while most countries were adopting tough anti-terrorism measures, the provisions of similar laws "have been diluted in India over a period of time".

Amdist a raging debate on the need for having tougher anti-terror laws, the main opposition BJP has been accusing the Congress-led UPA at the Centre of being soft on Terror and has declared that if it comes to power it would bring back POTA.

The saffron party is also making a political capital out of the "failure" of the Centre to give assent to Gujarat's GUJCOC anti-terror legislation which has similar provisions like that of MOCOCA in Congress-ruled Maharashtra.

The refrain of the Centre has been that the current provisions in various Acts are adequate enough to deal with terrorism and that certain stringent provisions of POTA have been incorporated in the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

Noting that there was a serious threat to the security of the country from terrorists who are "highly organised, motivated and possessing links with international terrorist groups", the panel noted that the existing penal laws in the country were not enacted to deal with this situation.

"There is ample evidence to indicate that terrorists have been able to escape the law either by exploiting the loopholes or by intimidating witnesses to subvert justice," it said.

The panel, headed by M Veeprappa Moily, pointed out that many western countries with strong traditions of democracy and civil liberty have enacted legislations to deal with the threat of terrorism.

Their laws contain provisions pertaining to constitution of special fast track courts, making release on bail extremely difficult for the accused, and enhanced penalties cutting the source of funding for terror activities, among others.

It said a comparison on anti-terror laws in India shows Terrorism and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act had provisions for constitution of designated courts, while POTA provided for special courts. But the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act has no provision for special courts, it said.

Sad state of affairs....

[Avinash R]

New Delhi, November 16: : In what could be music to BJP's ears, an official study of the provisions of existing anti-terror acts shows that they have been ‘diluted’ over a period of time.

These dumb reporters turn national security issues into political ones by using such words. When it's so clear that national and state anti terror laws need reforms due to the new types of threats to the nation these reporters are deflecting attention from the real issues which have to be debated and turn this into an congress against bjp political fight.

[vsudhir]

New Delhi, November 16: : In what could be music to BJP's ears, an official study of the provisions of existing anti-terror acts shows that they have been ‘diluted’ over a period of time.

These dumb reporters turn national security issues into political ones by using such words. When it's so clear that national and state anti terror laws need reforms due to the new types of threats to the nation these reporters are deflecting attention from the real issues which have to be debated and turn this into an congress against bjp political fight.

Very good point and 100% agree.

The real concern here is that basic, unanimous common set of definitions and experiences of aam aadmi regarding nation, security, priorities etc is getting systematically eroded.

National security needs buy-in from *all* mainstream communities and groups. The artificial divide identifying national security law and enforecement == hindu agenda is terrifying in its implications.

[Manu]

India Today Link

Kerala's youths have links with terrorists in J&K: Police

MG Radhakrishnan
Trivandrum, November 18, 2008

Kerala is yet to recover from the shock. For the first time it is now officially confirmed that youths from the southernmost state are being recruited to work with the militant outfits in Jammu and Kashmir. This follows the confirmation that four of the suspected militants killed in two separate encounters with security forces in Kupwara district in early October were from Kerala. The state police have said that those killed were Muhammed Fayaz (23), Muhammed Fahiz (24) of Kannur, Abdul Raheem (28) of Malappuram and Muhammed Yassin (28) of Ernakulam, all unemployed and school dropouts. The state police's newly formed Special Investigation Team (SIT) has since arrested 3 youths who are suspected to have recruited and sent the killed militants to Kashmir Valley.

According to J&K Police, the youths were killed by security forces when they were coming from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) and trying to cross Indian border near Lolab Valley in Kupwara district, 115 km from Srinagar. Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan expressed deep shock at the incident. "In the name of religion, youths are being lured by evil forces to work for militant outfits and to make them arch criminals. It's shocking that these evil forces are active in Kerala too and are out to destroy our traditional communal harmony and peace," said Achuthanandan.

Police now suspect that hundreds of youths from the state must have been recruited in the past few years for working with militant outfits like Lashkar-e-Toiba after training in Pakistan. Police have launched a massive drive to nab T. Nazeer also from Kannur suspected to be the kingpin of the recruiting network in the state. Nazeer was an accused in many criminal cases including an attempt to murder the late CPI(M) leader E. K. Nayanar while he was chief minister in 1999 to protest the arrest of Abdul Nasser Madani by the state police, in connection with the Coimbatore blasts.

SIT has so far arrested 3 people - Muhammed Faizal (24), P.V. Abdul Jaleel (38) M. Mujib (26) - from Kannur district for allegedly recruiting all the slain youths for militancy in the Valley. Faizal is suspected to have taken the youths to Bangalore in September from where they went to Hyderabad and finally to the Valley. Jaleel was arrested after it was found that the youths killed had called him on his mobile from the Valley, a day before they met with death. About 50 persons have been since taken into custody for interrogation. Mujib is suspected to have purchased train tickets to Banaglore for the youths.

Among the killed, Yassin was identified as Varghese Joseph, a Christian who had converted to Islam 8 months ago. A 5th class dropout, Joseph belonged to a poor family in Kochi and was working with a major criminal gang indulging in extortion and paid criminal activities.

Fayaz, the second killed was an 8th class dropout and a manual labourer from Kannur who too had a record of petty criminal activities like burglary, chain snatching etc. Fahiz also unemployed but attached to some Muslim spiritual organisations. Raheem had connections with Islamic militant outfits and was an accused in burning a Tamil Nadu state government bus in Kochi in 2005 to protest the arrest of Abdul Nasser Madani, a rabble-rousing cleric arrested in connection with the Coimbatore blasts in 1998. He is also relatively better off among the four as his father is an oil mill owner and a former NRI.

According to police, the interrogation of those in custody has indicated that hundreds of young men from the state mainly from the north Kerala districts of -Malappuram, Kozhikode, Kannur, Kasargode have been recruited in the past few months by paid middle men for Islamist organisations outside the state. The recruits were sent with money first to a tareequat (religious educational centre) in Chandrayangutta near Hyderabad for a month-long indoctrination.

"Here they are turned into committed jihadis. Afterwards recruits are given duty according to their aptitudes. Some are sent to work with militant organisations in J&K and other states, some to their respective states to organise jihadi operations. Some of the trained take up more peaceful but religious vocations," said a top police official. "Certainly hundreds of youths in the state have now taken to jihadism although only some of them have embraced violence. But we suspect the 4 killed were being sent by J&K militants to plan some mischief in Kerala" said the official.

According to officials the terror dimension is a latest extension of the hawala and counterfeit money racket thriving in the state with origins in the Gulf countries where more than 1.5 millions Keralites work.

Many of those nabbed in the recent days with alleged links to the three killed in the Valley were involved in the hawala racket. Jacob Punnuse, the state's Additional DGP had recently revealed that hawala money worth Rs 10,000 crore reaches the state annually.

Recruitment for militant networks has emerged as an industry in the state with middlemen making a killing by hooking willing young men with allurements like money, motor bikes, mobile phones etc. "In fact interrogation of the middlemen show they were minor links at the end of a long chain who don't know the sources," said an official.

The National Development Front (NDF), a Muslim organisation which came into being in the aftermath of Babri Masjid demolition is suspected to be leading the Islamic fundamentalist forces in the state. Jaleel, arrested after the death of Keralites in the Valley was an active NDF worker.

The NDF, which claims to work for the civil rights of Muslims and Dalits was accused of having been behind many violent incidents in the past. "NDF is under suspicion," said Achuthanandan. Pinarayi Vijayan, CPI(M) state secretary and a vocal critic of NDF who has slammed it as the recruiting agency for militants.

Even the Muslim League has called NDF a dangerous organisation and asked for its ban. But the resource-rich NDF has made major inroads into the Muslim youth with various allied outfits and also a newspaper has denied all charges.

"I challenge them to produce at least a shred of evidence for their charges. Jaleel (arrested after the three were killed in J&K) must have involved in these activities only in his individual capacity," said Nazirudden Elamaram, NDF secretary. Jaleel was since suspended from NDF which now has regional outfits in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in various names.

There are charges that NDF also imparts physical training to its cadres. The South Asian Terrorism portal headed by K. P. S. Gill, former DGP, Punjab has mentioned NDF as having been controlled by former SIMI cadres. A large chunk of the total remittances worth Rs 25000 crore every year Kerala receives from its people working in the Gulf countries go to the coffers of the new religious outfits and their activities.

The ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) and opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) are blaming each other for allying with NDF and other Islamic fundamentalists during elections. "LDF was openly supported in the last elections by Jamaath Islami, Peoples Democratic Party and also NDF," charges Ramesh Chennithala, KPCC President.

"They campaigned with posters having pictures of CPI(M) candidates along with PDP's founder Abdul Nasser Madani who was then in the jail in connection with Coimbatore blasts. Communist veterans like E. M. S. Namboothiripad and A. K. Gopalan are replaced by fundamentalist leaders in their posters," he said. The UDF has now launched an agitation against the government's failure to check militancy. They have particularly targeted Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan who is travelling in the US for the past two weeks. "Balakrishnan's closeness with NDF leaders is well known. He has also shown scant regard to such a horrific development in Kerala by refusing to return by cutting short his excursion to USA" says M. M. Hassan, KPCC Secretary. Kodiyeri who also holds the Tourism portfolio and state Industries Minister Elamaram Kareem have been in USA for about a month to seek investment to the state. {And on his Return, he has immediately started the probe on RSS workers}

Madani has hit back the UDF with details of the meetings he had with Congress and League leaders who visited him in the prison with requests for support in the elections. "I have kept all the letters the prominent UDF leaders wrote to me then seeking my support," says Madani, who after 9 years in prison as an under trial was released from prison last year when the court said there was no evidence against him. The previous UDF government had given various posts to the PDP nominees. Earlier, LDF and UDF had passed a unanimous resolution in the Assembly asking to free Madani.

In the last Assembly elections in 2006 Madani and Jamaath Islami had lent support to LDF while the NDF had backed the UDF. "It is CPI(M)'s open encouragement to the new Islamist outfits in order to weaken the Muslim League which has helped them grow," said an official.

A study by a former DGP shows that the Muslim League has been on a decline since the demolition of Babri Masjid owing to its alliance with the Congress. "In its place grew more militant outfits," says P J Alexander, former DGP who did the study. However, the League's links with Islamic militants were proved by the Judicial Commission that probed the communal clashes in Marad beach in Kozhikode which killed 8 people in 2005.

The confirmation of the Kashmir-Kerala terror link has now raised questions about the state government's position that the state was free from the militant menace. There were reports that the succeeding governments-both led by LDF and UDF- have ignored notices and alerts from central investigating agencies about Kerala emerging a breeding ground for militants since the nineties.

Besides the growth of newly formed Islamic organisations and their publications there were a series of violent incidents that have rocked the state since the nineties. Recovery of pipe bombs from a river in Malappuram, bomb blast in a train at Trissur, murder of Chekannur Moulvi, a prominent reformist cleric, torching of thatched movie houses by suspected fundamentalists, arrest of Madani and some other Keralites in connection with the Coimbatore blasts, explosions in bus stands in Kozhikode, repeated communal clashes on Marad beach, Kozhikode etc. were some of the incidents. The latest was the arrest of Altaf Ahmed, a 26 -year-old Hizb-ul-Mujahdeen activist from J&K in Idukki district in January.

There have been reports that some young men from Kerala were given training by militants in J&K and also Pakistan. Police officials indicate two routes for the youths to reach the terror networks in the Valley. One they are recruited by local middlemen who send them first to the religious centre near Hyderabad where they are subjected to indoctrination before they proceed to J&K.

The indications are that all the four killed now had reached the Valley through this route. The second is an international route by which unemployed young men are first sent to Gulf from where they are sent to Pakistan with fake passports to undergo training in militancy before they are returned to India with specific terror plans. "No one suspects their first trip to Gulf seeking job as hundreds of keralites travel to these countries every month," says a Home department official.

Hormiz Tharakan, former state DGP and Director of RAW has said that it was a Keralite -C.A.M Basheer- a former national president of SIMI who was one of the first Indian militants to be trained in Pakistan by the ISI in the nineties. Basheer is suspected to be in Dubai now, but active behind many militant operations.

According to BJP and other Hindu outfits, both the governments led by Congress and CPI(M) never made any serious attempts to check the growing fundamentalist tendencies because of their fear to antagonise the politically powerful Muslim community. "The state is paying for the appeasement policies of CPI(M) and Congress", says P. K. Krishnadas, BJP state president. The BJP and other Hindu organisations have always maintained that the jihadis were fast "converting Kerala into a Kashmir". They have also dubbed the northern district of Kannur to which belonged most of the suspected jihadi activists as Kerala's Azamgarh. "Even after the latest revelation the LDF government says it will not ban organizations like NDF," says Krishnadas.

The latest notice the state government received was from P.C. Pandey, DGP, Gujarat in July in the aftermath of the Ahmedabad bomb blasts. Pandey revealed at a press conference at Ahmedabad that activists of the banned SIMI who were suspected to have masterminded the blasts had held meetings in Karnataka and Kerala. The state government had also confirmed that SIMI activists had held secret meetings in Panaikulam in Kochi and the Vagamon in Munnar hill ranges in 2007. Though cases were registered by state police against the meetings subsequently many arrested were released later under suspicious circumstances. The police circle inspector who released some of the arrested from custody is being investigated by the state vigilance department.

However, the state government continues to reject charges of complacency. "Neither the state government nor the police have received a single notice from any central agency until now about possible militant operations in the state," says Paloli Muhammed Kutty, Minister who is in charge of Home Affairs as the Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan is away in the USA.

Kutty said the Gujarat DGP's mention was only a casual reference not backed by any official intimation. "Yet we had registered cases against those who organised those meetings much before the DGP mentioned it," said a top police official. However, he admitted that the Gujarat DGP's revelation was not given much consideration because it came from someone who was too close to Narendra Modi government. "Pandey was the controversial Police Commissioner of Ahmedabad during the anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002. It was clear that an officer accused of being an RSS crony was only parroting the Sangh Parivar's exaggerated and politically motivated charges," he said.

It is now clear that all the three left Kerala enroute to the Valley in September second week with Muhammed Faizal, who is one of the three arrested. "My son was taken on September 10 by Faizal offering him a job in Bangalore. But when there was no information from him for weeks we enquired with Faizal who told us he had joined for religious studies in Hyderabad," said Safiyath, killed Fayaz's mother. She has refused to receive the body of Fayaz saying she didn't want to see her son's face as he worked against the country. "If the charge that he had worked with terrorists was right I don't want to see his body," she told K.Sreejith, Superintendent, Kannur. Fayeez's parents also refused to receive their son's body citing the same reason. Following this the bodies were buried in the Valley. According to the police the three were taken to Bangalore from where they went to Hyderabad before arriving in the Valley.

The state government and top police brass reject that Kerala is infested with the militant menace now. "Only a handful have taken to this route. Kerala is still the safest state in the country and occupies only an insignificant place in the country's terror map," says Vaikom Viswan, LDF convenor. He also rejects the demand to ban NDF. "Ban will not help matters. We have to marginalize them politically," says Viswan.

Police officials say that more than an ideological commitment what drives most youths to work with militants could be the chance to make fast bucks. "There have been attempts by pan-Islamic outfits since nineties to recruit youths from Kerala. But all that they could get until now are few petty criminals. This shows the state's society is healthy enough not to accommodate militant tendencies," said a top police official.

"No religious fundamentalism can grow in a society which shows no intolerance on the basis of religion. Muslims are the safest and most well off in Kerala which ensures that militancy does not grow in the community here," says he. He also rejects an increasing flow of young militants to Kashmir.

"They don't stand a chance there for many reasons. Physically they would stand out from average Kashmiris which will make them very visible to enforcement agencies. They will also be unable to survive both the harsh climate and the tough security forces as the three who did not last even a month there" says he. According to police, the killed Kerala recruits must have been used to work in the allied criminal and commercial activities of the terrorists as carriers of narcotics, arms etc.

Killed in the Valley

1.Muhammed Fayaz, Kannur (23)
2.Muhammed Fahiz, Kannur (24)
3.Muhammed Yassin, Ernakulam (28)
4.Abdul Raheem (28), Malappuram

Kerala-J&K terror route

1. North Kerala districts-Bangalore-Hyderabad-Kashmir
2. North kerala districts-Gulf-Pakistan-Kashmir

Kerala's terror calendar

1993: Chekannur Moulvi, the reformist cleric killed in Malappuram
1994: Movie theatres torched in Malappuram
1996: Pipe bombs recovered from river in Malappuram
1997: Blast in train at Trissur station
1998: Abdul Nasser Madani and other Keralites arrested in connection with Coimbatore blasts
2003: Communal carnage in Marad, Kozhikode
2006: Low intensity bombs exploded in Kozhikode busstand

[ramana]

New Delhi, November 16: : In what could be music to BJP's ears, an official study of the provisions of existing anti-terror acts shows that they have been ‘diluted’ over a period of time.

These dumb reporters turn national security issues into political ones by using such words. When it's so clear that national and state anti terror laws need reforms due to the new types of threats to the nation these reporters are deflecting attention from the real issues which have to be debated and turn this into an congress against bjp political fight.

No what has happened is that the political class and the media have become anti-nationalist and expect to reap rewards for this stance. How can the nation state survive when anti-nationalists are at the top of the govt and at the top of the media?

[Philip]

The report below is a typical example of anti-Indian propaganda that tries to besmirch the country and Hindus,through malicious propaganda,that too from a "US" "Good News" outfit.The person who has made these allegations should be immediately taken into custody to ascertain the "truth".The report also put out a picture of a RSS rally,trying to establish a link between the allegations and the RSS,which has absolutely no connection with these allegations which appear absurd.Killing someone for a chicken! I've said before that we are at grave risk from the US funded and manipulated so-called "Christain" evangelical outfits that masquerade as innocent mainstream Christian institutions .While the Orissa govt. has clearly failed to maintain law and order in the affected areas of the state and violence against the innocents must be condemned,a full probe is needed to establish those outfits which are responsible for disrupting communal harmony ,including the one that made these allegations.

Strangely,the man in charge of this NGO is one " Dr Faiz Rahman", the chairman of Good News India (GNI),not a Christian sounding name at all! It is however heartening that the British minister refused to ban the RSS and BD members from entering Britain.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 186703.ece

Hindu extremists' reward to kill Christians, as Britain refuses to bar members
(SANJEEV GUPTA/EPA)

Members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) party take part in a 'Weapon Worship' ceremony in Bhopal. Britain has refused to bar members of the radical group

Rhys Blakely in Bombay
Extremist Hindu groups are offering rewards of money, food and alcohol to mobs to kill Christians and to destroy their homes in India, according to aid workers in the eastern state of Orissa.

The allegations follow the British Government's refusal to bar members of two radical groups widely linked to the worst anti-Christian violence witnessed in India since Partition from entering the UK.

The US-based head of an organisation that runs several orphanages in Orissa, one of India's poorest regions, has claimed that Christian leaders are being targeted by Hindu militants and now carry a bounty on their heads. "The going price to kill a pastor is $250 US dollars," Dr Faiz Rahman, the chairman of Good News India (GNI), said.

A spokesman for the All India Christian Council (AICC) said: "People are being offered rewards to kill, and to destroy churches and Christian properties."

He added: "Different tasks have different rewards. They are being offered foreign liquor, chicken, mutton, and weapons. They are being given petrol and kerosene."

In recent months, Orissa has suffered a wave of murder and arson that has claimed at least 67 lives, according to the Catholic Church.

Several thousand homes have been razed, hundreds of places of worship destroyed and as winter approaches crops are now wasting in the fields.

A group of Catholic Bishops from Orissa recently gave warning that the violence was part of a "master-plan" to drive Christians from the Kandhamal district of Orissa, the scene of the worst unrest. In a letter to the state's chief minister they wrote: "This conflict is a calculated and pre-planned master-plan to wipe out Christianity from Kandhamal district, Orissa, in order to realise the hidden agenda … of establishing a Hindu Nation."

In recent days the violence has calmed, but at least 11,000 refugees remain in camps in Kandhamal. "They are too scared to go home. They know that it they return to their villages they will be forced to convert to Hinduism," Father Manoj, who is based at the Archbishop's office in Bhubaneshwar, the capital of Orissa, said.

This month Lord Malloch-Brown, Minister of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, turned down a plea that members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bajrang Dal, two extremist groups widely linked to the Orissa violence, be barred from entering Britain.

"Neither organisation is proscribed in the UK or in India, nor do the Indian government classify either as a terrorist organisation," Lord Malloch-Brown said in reply to a question by former Cabinet Minister Lord Patten.

There have been calls from members of India's ruling government coalition for the RSS and Bajrang Dal to be banned. Analysts say the government is unlikely to act for fear of alienating Hindu voters in the run up to general elections expected in the spring.

[shyamd]

x post

MK Narayanan has submitted a report to PM about Naxal threat especially in Bengal. Yindian yintel are very concerned about Naxal threat. They say this is the main threat India is facing.

The Naxalists also forbid mining of bauxite and iron ore on their territory, preventing foreign or Indian companies that produce steel or refine oil from investing in the regions they control.

In these areas, composed of huge savannas and forests, the Naxalists levy taxes, re-distribute land and conduct raids against Indian security forces.

Naxals control area where 85% of India's coal is and 75% of the coal-fired electricity generated in eastern India

Since then Beijing has occasionally backed the movement whenever it suits China’ s interests and in keeping with the state of its diplomatic relations with India

Presence in 11 states.
-------------------
First Computer Forensics lab set up by a private intelligence company in Gurgaon called Orkash Business Intelligence.

Although they already have labs in universities in coimbatore and I do believe NTRO do have some facilities.

A number of British and American firms outsource part of their forensic work to India.
Orkash wants to capitalize on the expertise accumulated by local computer specialists to develop its own services in the branch.

[R_Kumar]

India Today Link

Kerala's youths have links with terrorists in J&K: Police

After Mumbai ATS drama, even hardcore Hindu fundamentalist will have doubt about Indian police claim. Indian police are joke.

[svinayak]

These dumb reporters turn national security issues into political ones by using such words. When it's so clear that national and state anti terror laws need reforms due to the new types of threats to the nation these reporters are deflecting attention from the real issues which have to be debated and turn this into an congress against bjp political fight.

No what has happened is that the political class and the media have become anti-nationalist and expect to reap rewards for this stance. How can the nation state survive when anti-nationalists are at the top of the govt and at the top of the media?

In the garb of objective news these media groups have been putting one political party against the other, one religious community against the other, one caste against the other. All in the name of secularism and using the name of secularism.

The current trend of using religion as a community identity marker by the media is the most dangerous. Earlier caste , rich-poor identity markers were used for media manipulation but were mostly harmless.

[Manu]

Link

Madarsas multiply 200%, refuse modernisation

Rajendra S Markuna | Haldwani

In spite of the Uttarakhand Government's best efforts to modernise madarsas and bring these on par with mainstream schools by adequately funding the traditional religious learning centres, the madarsas have failed miserably to live up to expectations.

At the most, the State exchequer's generous gesture could help increase the number of registered madarsas from 11 in the hill State (when it was part of Uttar Pradesh eight years ago) to a whooping 299 at present.

In a shocking display of utter misuse of the Government's money, of the 299 madarsas registered with the Muslim Education Mission (MEM), only 33 could be modernised by the Social Welfare Department under its ambitious mission of bringing the hitherto old school of learning into the mainstream. The department finds it tough to convince teachers of these madarsas to include subjects like mathematics and sciences in the curricula. "To convince these teachers to switch over to modern education is not an easy task," Social Welfare Department's additional director RP Pant told The Pioneer.

Pant said, "Inhibitions in the minds of not-so-literate religious leaders about modernising the education in madarsas are so deep-rooted that we have been able to introduce mainline education in only 33 madarsas."

There are nearly 2,000 students in these modernised madarsas. As these madarsas are yet to impart the same level of education as modern schools, the students fail to get good jobs after the completion of their studies.

The only option available to these students is teaching and, that too, only in these madarsas.

The Social Welfare Department extended a grant of Rs 7,000 to these identified madarsas as fund for two teachers' salaries. Now it has been decided to double the grant, Pant said.

He added that the total number of madarsas could be much higher than anticipated in the absence of any survey. Despite the resistance shown by these traditional learning centres, the Social Welfare Department has set aside Rs 24 lakh this year for their modernisation. The MEM has computerised 125 madarsas at a cost of Rs 2.64 crore. It has also prepared a multi-media activity-learning module based on mathematics and science in Urdu for students of Classes IX to XII. About Rs 7.46 lakh have already been spent on this project during the financial year 2007-2008.

[Avinash R]

Deendar activists convicted in church blasts
http://mangalorean.com/news.php?newstyp ... tid=102004

Bangalore Nov 21, 2008: 21 Deendar activists were convicted today by a Special court in connection with the serial bomb blasts in Churches in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Goa.

The judge Shivanagoudar, pronouncing the judgement in the Parappana Agrahara Central jail here, where the Special court was located through video conference due to security reasons acquitted four others for lack of evidence. The quantum of punishment would be announced tomorrow.

The blasts had shook the state during May-July in 2000. The members of the Deendar Anjuman outfit were found guilty by the judge.

The court had tried 25 persons, who were accused in four cases of church blasts.

The then Congress Government headed by S M Krishna in Karnataka, had referred the church blast case to CoD in 2000, and the special court was set by the state government in 2005. The accused were charged under IPC section 120-B (Criminal conspiracy) and Expolsives Substances Act.

The members of the Hyderabad-based Deendar Anjuman had triggered serial bomb blasts in three churches in Bangalore, Wadi and Hubli in the state during May and June 2000. The Karnataka police, who were clueless about the persons involved in the church blasts however stumbled upon the evidence against the culprits when they were on their way to place another bomb which accidently went off in their vehicle. Two suspects were killed in the blasts and another was rescued by the police with severe burns.

The outlawed Deendar Anjuman group which had also planned to trigger bombs at the famous temple in Tirupathi, left behind leaflets of Bible Society of India to create an impression that the blast was the handiwork of Christians.

Subsequent to the blasts, the Union Government had banned the organisation, the decision of which was also upheld by a Tribunal.

Syed Zia-ul-Hassan, the prime accused and a Pakistani national was still at large and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had issued a red-corner notice against him. Hassan name also reportedly figured in the list of those most wanted by the Union Government, which was given to Pakistan by the NDA government for repartriation.

In separate incidents, the Deendar Anjuman activists also allegedly planted timer devices in a few churches in Goa and neighbouring Andhra Pradesh in May 2000.


Church blasts case: Court convicts 53
Saturday, November 22, 2008
http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/Nov ... updatenews

Bangalore, DHNS : A special court, hearing cases related to the serial bomb blasts in churches in Karnataka in 2000, convicted 53 members of Deendar Anjuman. Four others were acquitted in the case.

The accused were found guilty of carrying out serial blasts in churches at Hubli, Wadi (Gulbarga) and Bangalore in 2000. Hearing on the sentence will be held on Saturday in the special court of Sessions Judge, S M Shivangoudar.
Five others, including the main accused, are currently in Pakistan. Their trial will be held only after their extradition, said a release.

Two of the accused (Zakir and Siddiqi) were killed on the spot, while another (SM Ibrahim) was injured when they were transporting bombs to plant them in other churches on July 9, 2000. Police arrested Ibrahim, and he spilled the beans about Deendar Anjuman and its intention to create communal disturbances in the country, the release said.

The Corps of Detectives took up the investigation and arrested 85 persons and filed charge-sheets against them.
The accused would deliberately abandon a few pamphlets, the contents of which stated that some Hindu organisations had carried out the blasts.

The investigation team was headed by DySP VS D’Souza. For the trial of the cases, a special court was constituted at the Central Jail, Bangalore. Special public prosecutor H N Nilogal was appointed public prosecutor to conduct the case on behalf of the State government.


81 held guilty in 2000 church blasts
Friday, November 21, 2008 22:01 IST

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1208448

BANGALORE : A Special Court, which was holding trial into the 2000 serial church blasts in Karnataka, held 81 persons guilty of the crime on Friday. Special judge S M Shivanagoudar will pronounce the quantum of punishment to the guilty on Saturday.

The special court was constituted by the state government. Though the cases were initially investigated by the local police, it was later handed over to the Corps of Detectives (CoD), which filed chargesheets against the accused too.

The serial blasts occurred between May and July 2000 in various churches within Karnataka, Goa and Andhra Pradesh, creating panic among the people and leaving the police completely clueless.

However, on July 9, the perpetrators fell into a trap of their own making in Bangalore. The extremists were returning by a Maruti van after bombing churches in Jagajeevanramnagar when several bombs kept in their vehicle went off. According to police, it occurred when their van shook while negotiating a road hump. Two occupants of the van, Zakir and Siddiqi, died on the spot while the third, S M Ibrahim, sustained injuries.

Soon afterwards, the police raided Ibrahim's house at Murugeshpalya and seized several documents and a computer hard disk - which led to the arrests of several others in the three states. All of them belonged to an outfit called Deedar Anjuman (Religious Association), an unknown terrorist outfit till that time.

Deendar Anjuman

Deendar Anjuman was founded by Hazrath Moulana Siddique - alias Deendar
Channabasaveshwara - at Bellampet, Gulbarga district, in 1924. Its head office was at Asif Nagar, Hyderabad. Though the organisation operated behind the façade of establishing religious equality, it had a hidden Jehadi agenda, which aimed at achieving the Islamisation of India.

Soon after the death of Moulana Siddique, his eldest son Zia-ul-Hasan became its religious head. The present headquarters of Deendar Anjuman is located at Mardan in Pakistan, where Zia is settled with his family. Though it initially claimed to be a Sufi sect, the Deendar Anjuman floated a terrorist outfit called Jamat-e-Hizbul Mujahiddin (JHM) with the patronage of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).

Every year, on the second week of Muslim month of Rajab (October), a religious function resembling Urs was arranged by the Deendar Anjuman centre at Hyderabad to mark the death anniversary of its founder. Zia and his family members used to visit India and meet members of the outfit across it. They also used to visit various places in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Goa to collect funds and contact followers. The visits of Zia and his family were aimed at exhorting Muslim youths in India to get trained in Pakistan on matters relating to handling of weapons and explosives.

During one of the visits in October 1999, the family held a secret meeting of 'faithfuls' at Deendar's Hyderabad Ashram and conspired to wage a war against India. It was at this meeting that they decided to target churches, bridges and rail tracks so as to create communal tension and destabilise the Indian economy. The outcome of this meeting resulted in church blasts in Bangalore, Hubli, Batakurki and other places.

Terror track

1. On June 8, 2000, two crude bombs were set off at Saint Anne's Church in Wadi, Gulbarga District. The church was damaged and two persons were injured. Chargesheets were filed by the CoD against 19 persons and 15 faced trial in the case.

2. On July 9, 2000, bombs were set off at St Peter Paul Church in Jagajeevanaramnagar, Bangalore. Of the 29 accused, 17 accused faced trial.

3. On July 8, 2000, the group triggered off bombs blasts at the St John Luthern Church in Hubli. Sixteen persons faced trial in the case. The final blast occurred when a bomb went off accidentally while the terrorists were transporting them in a Maruti van on July 9.

In all the four cases, 27 common accused persons were tried together. Members of the Pakistan-based outfit, its present head Zia-ul-Hassan, and his four sons are still absconding. Red corner notices were issued against each of them and efforts are being done to extradite them from Pakistan. One of the accused died during the trial.

[sum]

Regarding the church bombing convictions, a report mentioned that the bombers used to distribute Hindu org(RSS,BD) pamphlets at the blast site to mislead the police...

So, even these terrorists have learnt the art of shielding themselves a lot time back itself since even a single piece of paper having the word RSS at any blast site will ensure hundreds of "secularists" on the road chanting Hindu terror...

[Manu]

Link

Top cops told to maintain dossier on religious outfits
23 Nov 2008, 0303 hrs IST, Vishwa Mohan, TNN

NEW DELHI: Days after Centre asked all states to send it details on the role of Bajrang Dal and other radical groups in communal incidents and action taken, top cops who assembled here from across the country for a security conference discussed on Saturday the modalities to keep a tab on all similar outfits- — irrespective of religious affiliations — by maintaining a complete dossier of its active members.

The watch will cover even those who do not have any criminal record. Referring how such an exercise could have prevented incident like Malegaon blast which was allegedly carried out by unsuspecting members of a Hindu outfit — Abhinav Bharat — and self-anointed Shankaracharya and woman saint (sadhvi), senior police and intelligence officers pitched for what will be gigantic task during a separate session dedicated to discuss terrorism and emergence of new radical outfits on the first day of the two-day Conference.

The session, chaired by Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief P C Haldar, took up other recent blasts — carried out by Islamic terror group Indian Mujahideen (IM) and SIMI combine in Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi — for discussion in order to devise a full-proof mechanism to deal with such threat in future.However, officials showed keen interest in discussing the Malegaon incident in the light of arrest of 10 persons from different walks of life including serving and retired Army officers.

The conference, inaugurated by home minister Shivraj Patil, is being attended by directors general and inspectors general of police of all the states, Union Territories and central security and intelligence agencies.

A senior official, who attended the meeting, said that the reference to the role of Hindu outfit and the details emerging about the Malegaon blast probe was quite obvious when participants specifically pointed to the new trend and complete absence of intelligence on such groups. Although nothing concrete about the ways to keep tab on such outfit and radical Hindus had come up during the three-hour long session, there was a general consensus to put them under scanner the way it was being done in the case of radical Islamic groups and Christian organisations suspected to be involved in proselytising, he added.

Participants, however, also brought out the possible difficulties in such an exercise in India where nearly 1,000 groups, duly registered, are openly religious in nature. IB officials, on the other hand, asked state cops to sensitise their Special Branches for the exercise, saying if all the states work together in a coordinated manner, the task of keeping detailed background notes and activities of nearly 1 lakh persons (average 100 from each radical outfit) would not be so difficult.

Besides, the cops also underlined the importance of keeping track of financial details of such registered societies through effective revenue intelligence. Better coordination between central and state agencies, need to recruit more people in IB and special branches of state police and bringing more metropolitan cities within the ambit of the existing scheme of mega-city policing were among other issues discussed in the light of as many as 64 terror attacks across the country in the past six months.

Major serial blast in Jaipur and Guwahati underlined the need to bring those cities as well under the mega-city policing programme which currently aims to create better policing infrastructure only in seven cities including Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Chennai.

[Manu]

Fewer terror attacks under UPA, says Shivraj Patil

[Gerard]

PM suggests setting up of a task force to deal with terror

[sum]

Fewer terror attacks under UPA, says Shivraj Patil

Does he even feel a tinge of uneasiness when he puts out such pearls?

[harbans]

Cross posted from the Malegaon thread..

Indian Express...July 2000 After bomb blasts in Churches in Goa, Karnataka etc:

Publication: The Indian Express
Date: July 8, 2000

The state Congress yesterday demanded an apology from Prime Minster Atal Behari Vajpayee and Union Home Minster L K Advani for their “conflicting statements on the attacks on the Christian community”.

Addressing a press conference at Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee office in South Mumbai, party spokesman B A Desai said Vajpayee’s recent statement during his foreign trip on the attacks on Christian being isolated incident and Advani’s remarks on anti-national elements being behind the incidents amounted to interference in the fair trial and investigations in the attacks.

Advani’s statement was a clear indication of absolving the communal forces of the charges against them, he alleged.

By making such statements, both Vajpayee and Advani were depriving the sufferers of the minority community, of free and fair justice, he said and demanded that the two leaders should apologise for their statements.

Circa 2008, Nov 22:

Church blasts: 23 Deendar men convicted
Bangalore: A special court, hearing cases related to serial bomb blasts in churches in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Goa in 2000, has convicted 23 people belonging to the Deendar Channabasaveshwara Anjuman group.

Of the 27 accused who were tried, four were acquitted.

Special Court Judge S M Shivana Gowdar is yet to pronounce the quantum of punishment in the case, which has been adjourned till December 3.

Special Public Prosecutor H L Nilogal argued for the state.

In 2000, six blasts were carried out by the group in Andhra Pradesh, four in Karnataka and one each in Maharashtra and Goa.

A three-member Corps of Detectives team headed by Deputy Superintendent of Police V S D'Souza investigated the church blasts at Wadi (Gulbarga District), Hubli, Bangalore and another blast in the state and filed a chargesheet before the special court.

The blasts were carried out by the Deendar Channabasaveshwara Anjuman outfit founded in 1920s and the 'conspiracy' was hatched at Hyderabad on October 1999, the COD said.

The officers said that even in selecting the Deendar members for the terrorist acts, utmost care had been taken.

Majority of those who were handpicked for the purpose were closely related to each other and some of them were even trained in insurgency and use of explosives by the ISI in Pakistan. Khaliq-ul-Zama of Nuzvid in Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh was named the chief of the sabotage operations. All the four Zama brothers, Khaliq, then an auditor at the Krishna District Cooperative Central Bank; Shamsad, a conductor with the Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation; Zeelani, a mechanic; and Syed Hassan-ul Zama, an Indian Air Force officer, were involved in the conspiracy.

Three of them have been convicted; Khaliq died during the trial.

Similarly, S.M. Ibrahim, the first to be arrested in Bangalore, and who too has been convicted, and his four brothers who were based in Vijayawada and Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh, also had played a key role in the explosions, the officers explained.

Links:

http://www.hindu.com/2008/11/22/stories ... 220600.htm

http://news.in.msn.com/national/article ... id=1705914

http://www.hvk.org/articles/0700/21.html


Do you think any apologies will be forthcoming. This news was quietly tucked in page 10 in HT, 10 lines of a small column.

[Muppalla]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Al-Q ... 748244.cms

what this means is GOI does not want to prevent the strikes as it will have to go to sleeper cells and touch the vote bank. Instead, just give warning thru favorable press. It means that Indian cities have to see few more strikes in the near future. Connect the dots with latest statement from PM. He was saying that we cannot afford any more strikes.

Something is boiling in some quarters.

[RamaY]

Given the MMS performance, outlook and comments in press concerning national interests and internal security, I am starting to doubt MMS’s personal integrity and clean-image.

Very sad… but day by day this feeling is growing.

[Manu]

PM moots task force on terror

Posting the second Link in full, without comment (none are needed).
PM asks police to be sensitive towards minorities

NEW DELHI: Citing the controversy over the Batla House encounter, PM Manmohan Singh on Sunday said most of the criticism of cops was motivated but emphasised the need for them to reach out to religious and ethnic minorities.
Addressing a gathering of the country's top police officers at a conference of DGPs, Singh said, "Today, aspersions are being made regarding police impartiality and capabilities, and while I recognise that much of this is motivated, you must face up to the reality that many are convinced that the police is less than fair. This is so even when policemen die in the line of duty."

The PM also asked the police to have a proper understanding of the complex forces that are at work in India. He said, "You will come under attack from those sections of society which are determined to undermine India's liberal ethos, but this challenge has to be met and met effectively."

Though the PM didn't specifically refer to the Batla House shootout, there were absolutely no doubts as to what was the trigger for his statement. The remarks reflect a recognition on the government's part of the attack that counter-terror agencies have drawn over actions against accused -- like in the Batla House case and, more recently, in the Malegaon blast case.

Congress's own minority cell, Cabinet ministers and its ally Samajwadi Party have joined Muslim organisations, civil rights groups and liberals to raise doubts about the encounter in which decorated Delhi Police officer M C Sharma was killed.

Last week, the PM had called up Leader of Opposition L K Advani where the latter took up the allegations levelled by Malegaon blast accused Sadhvi Pragya Singh that she was tortured.

But Singh's remarks on Sunday also pointed to the trust deficit among the minority communities in police which allow motivated campaigns to gain traction.

Such campaigns have persisted even after more evidence has surfaced to suggest that Atif, who was killed in the Batla House encounter, may have indeed been one of the alleged masterminds of the Delhi and Ahmedabad blasts.

While the attacks from left-of-centre and liberal galleries, clergy and secular politicians like Mulayam Singh Yadav and Ramvilas Paswan are not new, investigating agencies have come under attack from a new source since they made arrests for the Malegaon blast carried out allegedly by Hindu radicals to avenge the series of jehadi blasts.
BJP, which always criticises rivals for questioning investigating agencies and cops, has now accused Maharashtra's anti-terrorism squad (ATS) of conducting a politically motivated probe and torturing those arrested. Taking a sharp turn from its stand where it accused those criticising investigating agencies of trying to demoralise cops, the Sangh Parivar has now even accused the cops of trying to sully the reputation of Army and Hindu religious figures.

The latest controversy over terror arrests has seen the leftists and liberals embrace the findings of the investigating agencies, whom they had earlier accused of framing innocents. CPM and others have, for the first time, attacked BJP for standing by the Malegaon blast accused in what marks the first instance of the Marxists showing faith in the findings of a terror-related probe.

While civil rights activists, who have vigorously taken up every allegation of torture and rights violations in terror cases, have spared the ATS over Malegaon arrests, this has not amused the investigating agencies. Senior officials in agencies, speaking on the condition of anonymity, expressed concern that the selectivity shown by the political class and the trend to differentiate among the terror accused will hinder future investigations.

Do you now see the master chess move by the UPA?

Check virus of communal violence: PM

Describing communal violence as a virus that threatens the secular fabric of the country, he said it needed to be checked in time, “otherwise our multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-caste society could well unravel.” Noting that the police have a critical role to play, he said: “Whatever the circumstances, the police must not remain passive spectators when deliberate efforts are made by communal elements and others to disturb the peace”.

Lastly, Kerala militant held in Hyderabad

[ramana]

Not my title.

From Pioneer, 25 Nov 2008

PM dials 100 for India

PM dials 100 to save India

Ashok K Mehta

It is difficult to keep count of the number of times Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has termed Maoism as the most serious internal threat to the country but been able to do so little to counter it. Last Sunday he was reminding India’s top policemen of this, many of whom have painted a red corridor from Pashupati in Nepal to Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh. At the recent SAARC summit in Colombo, he called terrorism the single biggest threat to the stability of South Asia. After every terrorist strike in the country he promises to deal with the perpetrators of the dastardly crimes but is perpetually in denial (“we are not soft on terror”).

While exhibiting rare political will in snatching the path-breaking 123 India-US civil nuclear deal from the jaws of defeat, he’s been unable to show any result in meeting threats to internal security. After the September attacks in Delhi, Parliament sanctioned mundane additions like more police stations and CCTVs.

In a miraculous turn of events, last Sunday he actually ordered the establishment of a high-powered task force under the National Security Adviser to evolve a plan in 100 days to address the emerging challenges to internal security. The decision is politically well timed and long overdue in a country which is the oldest victim of terrorism and where more lives have been lost tolerating the scourge than in fighting five wars on our borders. India’s main challenge is from within and not from across the LoC or LAC.

After Operation Blue Star, in 1985 Babbar Khalsa triggered 110 transistor bombs killing 85 people around Delhi, using the same explosive mixture as employed today; many of the terrorists are still on trial. This tells you something about the lackadaisical policing and prosecuting procedures. Two-and-a-half decades after the terrorist bombings, a plan is to be initiated which, even if it is prepared, may never get implemented.

Still, it is heartening to learn that National Security Adviser MK Narayanan has met officials from the US Homeland Security Department to explore ideas relevant to our ground reality. The relevant of these is that the US was attacked just once on 9/11 seven years ago and never again due to comprehensively devised fail-safe preventive measures at home and pre-emptive actions abroad.

Three months ago, I wrote in these columns that one hoped the NSA, whose forte is internal security, would “kick-start a counter-terrorism mechanism culminating in a national internal security agency to stop the quarterly terrorist strikes in the heart of India emulating the Homeland Security concept”.

Ever since the terrorist attack on Parliament House in 2001, the police, the intelligence agencies and the military have presented a number of plans to contain and defeat the indirect wars being waged by our enemies. But never was a blueprint sought by any political authority to wage a holistic campaign against the multifaceted threats to internal security. In the past, these have been addressed piecemeal without integrating hard and soft power to fight the threats.

Every new challenge is met with a knee-jerk reaction. When the LTTE ‘air force’ first struck Colombo in March 2007, our Navy and Air Force shrugged off the aerial threats to national assets like nuclear plants, oil refineries and shipping in the south by the Tigers. Later individually both took precautionary measures.

The Committee of Secretaries has met to review preparedness against anticipated threats from sea and air to vital installations. Earlier this year, the Cabinet Secretary ordered a review for securing strategic targets in the National Capital Region from the air. Air defence guns are to be deployed for the security of these targets. Threat recognition and response must be assigned to an independent nodal agency having authority and accountability.

Effort to institutionalise the demands of internal security was made in the late-1980s when an Internal Security Ministry was formed. In 2001, the Kargil Review Committee recommended the formation of a nodal agency for dealing with threats to internal security under a unified command. In 2005, IIT Kanpur suggested establishing a National Internal Security Centre but the file got lost in North Block. So, it is not for want of trying but for lack of political will that internal security is in such a big mess. One can discern differences between the Prime Minister and his Home Minister over quantification of the Maoist threat.

Article 355 of the Constitution says that it is the duty of the Government to protect every citizen of the country. Foreigners living in this internally insecure country are amazed when law and order, being a state subject, is the reason attributed to the Union Government’s failure to tackle terrorism which they say is war.

The Supreme Court has decreed that terrorism goes beyond the pale of law and order. It has even asked the Government to establish a Central intelligence agency to probe anti-national activity that impinges on national security. In response, the Law and Home Ministries have given conflicting reasons as to why this cannot be done. It is high time legal obstacles are removed and terrorism is deemed as a danger to national security. Further, law and order must become a concurrent subject.

We are woefully ill prepared to meet the current threats and future challenges to internal security in every aspect of defence and deterrence: Intelligence, investigation, policing, prosecution and punishment. What is worse, politics, not national interest, determines policy and procedure. With the fourth largest military, a growing economy and robust democracy, India’s image as a rising power is undermined by frequent travel advisories that go to the heart of internal stability and credibility.

New and bigger challenges are in the offing, centred in Afghanistan-Pakistan, the established epicentre of global terrorism. The focus of war in Iraq has shifted decisively to Afghanistan/Pakistan. Violence in this region has quadrupled over the last two years. Renewed US and Nato pressure astride the Durand Line against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, which have merged, is likely to force jihadi human bombers towards the Kashmir theatre of operations and deeper into India.

The only suicide bomber to explode on Indian soil was the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigress Dhanu who took out a Prime Minister. The Al Qaeda variety is less discriminating in the choice of targets and creating mayhem. The 100-day ‘Save India’ wonder — if it takes off — will make India safer and enhance the Government’s credibility.

[Gerard]

Suspects were trained to lie

[Philip]

Excellent analysis.

http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2008/ ... ernal.html
Vikram Sood

Terrorism in India and its external ramifications: tackling the menace
India At The Receiving End

India possibly is the only country in the world that has faced insurgencies and terrorism of all kinds – ethnic, ideological and ethno-religious --for over sixty years. Yet despite this sustained onslaught on its very being India has survived this. And sixty years after independence, India and Pakistan – the main perpetrator of terrorism in India -- are on different trajectories.

India remains a secular democracy although our secular credentials are sometimes under some strain. After years of uncertainties, the fortune graph is now a steady upward curve as India positions itself to become a rising economic power. Pakistan, on the other hand, is on a downward slope, as it slips into a self-created jehadi abyss with the Taliban threatening to establish a radical Islamic regime in the country from its bases in FATA where all seven districts are under their control. While the world applauds India, it increasingly looks at Pakistan with suspicion as an irresponsible state.

In today’s context, international terrorism, invariably invokes references to jehadi terrorism. Unfortunately, the response to this, described as the global war on terror, was neither global, nor was it against terror. It remained restricted to handling the problem in only one part of the globe against targets that were unevenly defined. The ill planned war in Afghanistan or the unnecessary one in Iraq, were not about defeating terror because both created more terrorists than they destroyed. An over-militarised response gave it the wrong description of a war on terror whereas one should have been thinking and working in terms of counter-terrorism.

To the Muslim world, Osama bin Laden is not necessarily the devil incarnate that is perceived in the rest of the world. Osama had promised to deliver his followers from centuries of oppression and humiliation by the West and by their own rulers. Western media and propaganda to demonise Osama have made him into a cult figure. Many believe in him and his ideals and are willing to die for them. And there is no way you can kill a man who is willing to die.

As harsh extremist Islamic fires rage in Afghanistan and Pakistan it is no use exulting in this. There are varying estimates about the number of terrorists in FATA from 8000 to 40000. Those who have dealt with terrorism in Kashmir know what it takes to handle a terrorist force that numbers between 3000-3500 at any given moment. Pakistan does not have the ability or the inclination to take on this terrorist force. Almost surely these flames will singe us too, as they have begun to in Jaipur, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi and Ahmedabad. It may not be long before we could see a Taliban regime in Afghanistan with all its implications for the neighbourhood. It is fine to say that no religion propagates violence and terror and therefore a terrorist has no religion. But our response to this cannot be communal either. We have to get prepared to deal with it now and regrettably we are not prepared to deal with the gathering storm.

In the West, the problem has been that socio-economic factors have lead to political-religious manifestations. In India, externally inspired political factors threaten India’s the already weak socio-economic fabric. In the West, the Muslim population is a result of immigrations after the Second World War and their succeeding generations. In India, the Muslims are indigenous. In fact, it is Pakistan where its Muslim immigrants from India – the Mohajirs –after independence, have had difficulty being accepted by the Punjabi-dominated society. In Europe, the original population and the host governments have had difficulty in accepting outsiders who are extremely aggressive about preserving their way of life. The challenge in the West is how to amalgamate; the challenge in India is how to preserve the amalgam.

The Use of Islam by the Mullahs.

While discussing roots of terrorism in his book “No End to this War,” Walter Laqueur says that Muslims have had a problem adjusting as minorities, be it in India, the Philippines or Western Europe. Similarly, they find it difficult to give their own minorities a fair deal, Muslim or non-Muslim in their own countries — the Berbers in Algeria, the Copts in Egypt or the Christians or Shias in Pakistan or the Sudan. This has in turn led to what Olivier Roy calls globalised Islam – militant Islamic resentment at Western domination or anti-Imperialism exalted by revivalism. State sponsorship of terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy and strategy to negate military and other superiority, has been another facet of this problem.

Since religion is becoming centre stage in our country in the last few years, it is time we looked at this head on. A person’s religion is more often an accident of birth and sometimes an act of faith. The Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the Lourdes in Spain, the Wailing Wall of Jerusalem, the Amarnath Yatra in Kashmir and the Ram Setu in Rameshwaram are all a matter of faith and not a matter of cold scientific logic. In a country like ours, with all our religions and languages, with our tempers on a short fuse for any number of reasons, the best way to keep our secular identity and sanity intact is to say, “My religion but our country.”

In our country, Salman Khan celebrates Ganesh Chaturthi; the Indian cricket team’s speed attack could, on a given day, be led by Zaheer, Irfan and Munaf; like cricket, Bollywood is India’s great unifier and is dominated by the Khans; and, some of the best music has come from Naushad and A.R. Rehman. The finest dhrupad has been rendered by the Dagar brothers -- Fahimuuddin and Rahimuddin. Yet no one bats an eye lid because they are all Indians and do India proud. But some fundamentalist mullah from Mumbai s served Salman Khan with a fatwa. Salman’s father was brave enough to reject this and we need to acknowledge his conviction. Ours is and has to be a composite culture. There is no other way.

In Pakistan they teach them that jihad is the only way. Years ago they solved their problem by getting rid of their minorities and today even Shias are kafirs in a country that never tires itself of proclaiming that it is a homeland for the Muslims of South Asia. In Pakistan the present day purveyors of religion teach their children that theirs is the Only Faith which must overcome the Idol Worshiping Hindus, the Christians and the Jews. In one of his Friday sermons, the ISI-backed Pakistani Jamaat ut Dawa leader, Hafiz Saeed urged that “The solution to all your problems and that of the Muslim ummah lies in jehad.”

In dealing with Pakistan, we must remember that there is another Pakistan beyond the chic and elegant salons of Lahore. And these “other” wield considerable clout. In the words of Pervez Hoodbhoy, a well known Pakistani academic, “The Talibanisation of Pakistan’s tribal areas has caused alarm, but it is the rapid developments in the heart of nation’s capital, Islamabad that have stunned many.” Hoodbhoy quotes several incidents to say that he feared that the stage for transforming Islamabad into a Taliban stronghold was being set. Hoodbhoy’s paper adds that women nurses will not be able to attend to male patients. Male doctors will not be allowed to perform ECG or Ultra sound on women for fear that women may lure men away. After the 2005 earthquake girls under debris in Balakot were not allowed to be rescued by a male ambulance team. In April 2006, 21 women and 8 children were crushed to death in a stampede in a Karachi madrassa because the ambulance team comprised men. This is the way the Pakistani society is headed. The mullahs are winning and this will have repercussions for us.

In India we have shadowy organisations like the Indian Mujahedeen sending off letters to the Press that spew hate and venom against others and misquoting the Quran in support of this. In Pakistan’s increasingly intolerant sections, a similar letter by a minority would have resulted in massive reprisals against that minority. In India we let it pass, because the majority of Indians wants to be secular and believes in it although we do have aberrations like Raj Thakeray in Mumbai and fringe elements elsewhere. It is also unfair that a Muslim in India should have to prove his loyalty to the country each time there is a terrorist incident or a Hindu be accused of being a fundamentalist each time he owns up to being a Hindu.

Hafeez Saeed and others like Abdul Rehman Makki in Pakistan routinely quote from the Quran when they exhort their followers to launch jihad against India. They cite verse 9.5 from the Quran “Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them, captive harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war” or verse 9.14 “Fight them (the disbelievers) Allah will punish them by your hands and bring them to disgrace and give you victory over them and He will heal the hearts of those who believe.” This was also quoted by the Indian Mujahedeen in their fax after the Ahmedabad bombings. The point is that these are selectively used out of context both in time and space. It is against this misuse of religion that the moderate Muslim majority must speak out both against those who spread hate and also to educate that Hindu majority that only gets to read or see the wrong side of the story.

Recently M. J. Akbar wrote about this in the Times of India when he distinguished between the fasadis and the jihadis. The point is that he knows this, a lot of us understand this but those who get killed in terrorist blasts do not know and those they leave behind do not understand. Nor do those uneducated unemployed youth understand this for they are fed carefully edited portions from the Quran written in a language that they do not know. Is it not time that we translated the Quran into Indian languages so that most of us can read it and understand? In this age of the Internet this should be easier and would help counter the hate that is pasted on the Net. Asghar Ali Engineer (“Making a Mockery of Jihad”) and Tahir Mahmood, (“If Hindus are ‘mushrik’ what are we?”) have recently written on this. The Muslim needs to hear the voice of the moderate and not just that of the extremist-fundamentalist. Otherwise the voice of the likes of Hafeez Saeed will prevail.

The Two Great Obsessions

Internationally, the battle has really between globalised capitalism versus global Islam. The clash is between two Great Obsessions – one obsessed to retain its declining super power global dominance and the other obsessed with the ambition to become the dominant religion. One is affluent, powerful, politically empowered mainly Christian but running out of resources; the other is poor, politically un-empowered and Muslim, and resource rich. Both find nationalistic politics an obstacle to their progress because nationalism impedes economic domination and theological control. The former wants unhindered access to finance, markets and resources required to retain its primacy while the other strives for Islamic Caliphates, which practice a puritan Islam and return to former glory.

There is a naive assumption that if local grievances or problems are solved, global terrorism will disappear. The belief or the hope that, if tomorrow, Palestine, or Kashmir or Chechnya or wherever else, the issues were settled, terrorism will disappear, is a mistaken belief. There is now enough free floating violence and vested interests that would need this violence to continue. There has been a multifaceted nexus between narcotics, illicit arms smuggling and human trafficking that seeks the continuance of violence and disorder.

International terrorism as a Way of Life

Modern terrorism thrives not on just ideology or politics. The main driver is money and the new economy of terror and international crime has been calculated to be worth US $ 1.5 trillion (and growing), which is big enough to challenge Western hegemony. This is higher than the GDP of Britain, ten times the size of General Motors and 17 per cent of the US GDP (1998). Loretta Napoleoni refers to this as the New Economy of Terror.

All the illegal businesses of arms and narcotics trading, oil and diamonds smuggling, charitable organisations that front for illegal businesses and the black money operations form part of this burgeoning business. Terror has other reasons to thrive. There are vested interests that seek the wages of terrorism and terrorist war.

Narcotics smuggling generates its own separate business lines, globally connected with arms smuggling and human trafficking, and all dealt within hundred dollar bills. These black dollars have to be laundered, which is yet another distinctive, secretive and complicated transnational occupation closely connected with these illegal activities and is really a crucial infusion of cash into the Western economies.

In today’s world of deregulated finance, terrorists have taken full advantage of systems to penetrate legitimate international financial institutions and establish regular business houses. Islamic banks and other charities have helped fund movements, sometimes without the knowledge of the managers of these institutions that the source and destination of the funds is not what has been declared. Both Hamas and the PLO have been flush with funds with Arafat’s secret treasury estimated to be worth US $ 700 million to 2 billion.
Our main problem has been in dealing with Pakistan-inspired terrorism.

Countering Terror
When terror struck America and Britain, they introduced draconian laws. The Bush administration even introduced controversial surveillance laws. In India, we did away with the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), but did not consider it important to have an adequate substitute. Battling terror is a long and arduous task: the capability to prevent attacks has to be upgraded constantly, with the knowledge and acceptance that not all attacks can be prevented. It is hard battle where there are no rules for the terrorist and no scruples. Democracies have their inhibitions. Terrorism will never be overcome through good intentions. It will be overcome or managed through exercising hard options. There cannot be communalising of counter-terror and there cannot be compromises till the terrorist I son the run. Otherwise it is appeasement, in the terrorist’s lexicon.
Sharpening Intelligence Capabilities
Even with our present system there are many attacks that get aborted. But when intelligence is inadequate and follow-ups incomplete, indiscriminate arrests follow which lead to further alienation.
Heightened intelligence capability, sustained and built over a period of time, which is able to keep pace with the growing threat, skillful investigation and forensics, particularly at the state level, sharing intelligence, national identity cards, CCTVs at important places, speedy justice which is also seen to be fair, a system of governance that delivers what it is supposed to and a media that does not compete for TRP ratings over such issues: All this and more will have to be put in place for us to succeed. The character of terrorism has changed more rapidly in its operating procedures. There is greater reliance on the cyber and less on the cell phone and on sleeper cells among the jehadi networks while the Naxals retain a very strong hierarchical control mechanism. Both retain their element of surprise but the latter is also a reflection of poor ground state led intelligence. Both seem better trained, better equipped and extremely mobile. The counter terrorist lacks in all three spheres.

It is easy to blame the intelligence agencies for all that occurs. Globally, it has been found that despite all the State assistance for intelligence agencies, the ability to collect intelligence about non-State adversaries remains the most difficult and this includes not just the terrorist, but the mastermind, the arms smuggler, the safe house owner, the money launderer and other trans-national operatives. No single agency, no single country can provide this information and no one can still guarantee that every attack will be aborted or every terrorist cell unearthed on time. There has to be multi-level, multi-agency multinational co-operation acting in real time. We must understand that even the best intelligence can only minimise the threat or the forewarning will make the attack insurmountably difficult. And yet, all this kind of cooperation is the most difficult to achieve.

The questions are why is it that we let it happen again and again and can we not do anything to win this war against an unscrupulous and invisible enemy? Why do we give the impression of being soft and confused? There is no short cut to improving the intelligence and security apparatus of the country. Spare no cost and accept no compromises on this. If the country has a well endowed and trained intelligence apparatus acting without political interference (as distinct from accountability) it could provide pre-emptive intelligence that could abort terrorist acts and lead to arrests. It would also prevent indiscriminate arrests and all that follows. We could learn from the Americans – not completely but suitably – they tightened their laws even to extent that they were draconian, spent billions of dollars and improved intelligence collection and surveillance making them intrusive and they outsourced certain aspects of the work to maximise use of talent.

In its latest White Paper on Defence and National Security the French Government has stressed that the world has become “more unstable, more unforeseeable. New crises, in particular from the Middle East to Pakistan have come to the fore and have become interconnected. Jihadism-inspired terrorism aims directly at France and at Europe, which are in a situation of greater direct vulnerability.” The Paper defines its national security strategy as something that provides response to “all the risks and threats which could endanger the life of the Nation.” In another key finding, the White Paper says “Knowledge and anticipation represent a new strategic function and have become a priority. In a world characterized by uncertainty and instability, knowledge represents our first line of defence. Knowledge guarantees our autonomy in decision making and enables France to preserve its strategic initiative. It is knowledge which must be provided as early as possible to decision makers, military commanders and those in charge of internal and civil security in order to go from forecasts to informed action. Intelligence of all kinds, including from space and prospective studies, take on major importance.” Yet we in India show no urgency of this kind.

One cannot forever blame the foreign hand. The French for instance realized quite early that terrorist networks are multi-layered and they routinely infiltrate them to try and stay a step ahead of their adversary. It was the French external intelligence – the DGSE-- that had picked up signals of Al Qaeda attacks on the US including about airplane hijackings as early as January 2001. After 9/11, the British MI5 were able to prevent a major terrorist attack across the Atlantic through a combination of telephone, cyber and physical surveillance along with human intelligence

In India our tendency has been to make some post event superficial changes, pious declarations of intent and condemnations of the act accompanied by horrendous photographs of the event with knee jerk expert comments from media rookies. That is until the next attack takes place. We do not even have adequate laws to deal with the threat like the British and the Americans do, and for a country that has had to face terrorism for most of its independent existence, we do not even have national identity cards because it is politically inexpedient. Our border controls remain inadequate. Post event the investigating agencies should be allowed to operate in areas and societies from where the attack is suspected to have occurred or planned. There can be little success if exclusions are made on grounds of religion or region.


Lack of Public Awareness, Overzealous Media And Bureaucratic Lethargy

Public indifference to terrorist incidents may indicate that the people may have overcome fear which is a positive development but if it is because of indifference to suffering based on the hope that “I” shall not be the target because tragedies are only meant for “the other”, then we have a problem. There is inadequate public response because it is generally assumed that prevention of terrorism is exclusively the task of the state. This attitude has to change and only the state can help this change. The average citizen must be encouraged and educated to help the state by providing clues, warnings and assistance in investigations.

It has to be acknowledged that the police force is inadequately prepared to deal with the menace and it is not their fault that this is so. The Governments of the day are responsible for this state of affairs. Ill equipped, ill trained ,undermanned station houses they live in appalling conditions sometimes at the mercy of the very don against whom they are supposed to protect the society. Successive governments have taken away the authority and the dignity of the profession. The public has little confidence in the force and the force is unsympathetic to the public. The witness protection schemes are badly flawed and justice is indefinitely delayed. There is little incentive for the public to come forward with evidence and little incentive for the force to prosecute.

A terrorist event makes a good story or ‘breaking news’ but the media too needs some rules of conduct. It is important to report the truth but it is also sometimes important when we are fighting a war to sometimes not report or to modify the report without modifying the truth. Repeated telecast of pictures of frightened families, terrified children or mangled bodies is a victory for the terrorist. He has succeeded in frightening the people. And photographs of a prospective witness circulated widely would only help the terrorist. Often we glorify a terrorist when we refer to him as a fidayeen. All this has to change too if we want to win the war on terrorism. India must get ready to detect, deter and destroy this menace before it destroys us.

It is amazing that after sixty years of struggling with terrorism, we still say that each terrorist is new experience for us. The one institution that needs major reforms is the Ministry of Home Affairs. It has simply become too big and amorphous. It is manned by transient bureaucrats forever looking for greener pastures elsewhere and by junior staff who have no other future. Like the Ministry of External Affairs we should think in terms of a Ministry on Internal Security that is manned by a permanent cadre of regional, subject and language experts. Further, that this running and control top down should belong to this cadre and not left to those who qualify for life on the basis of an exam they passed decades ago.

The Shape of Things to Come

A familiar Pakistani strategy is unfolding in India where the attempt is to hoist all attacks in India outside Kashmir on the al-Qaeda banner or to pretend that things are not fully under the control of the army in Pakistan. Anyone who has studied Pakistan knows that this is not true. And if things are not under control in a military dictatorship of more or less 60 years standing, then that country is falling apart. We all know that it is the Pakistani — essentially the Punjabi Lashkar and the Jaish who operate from bases in Pakistan and are members of Osama’s International Islamic Front — who continue to target India. They are not members of the al-Qaeda which is an Arab organisation but are ideologically akin

There are many in India, Pakistan and the West who remain in a state of denial about the march of Islamic forces in Pakistan. The manner in which the FATA episode has been dealt with, the manner in which the Lal Masjid episode was handled, or the innumerable suicide attacks that have taken place highlighted by the Marriott bombings in Islamabad, are some of the symptoms of the disease in Pakistan. Islamic radicalism is not seen in the chic salons of Lahore but at Miramshah and Wana in the NWFP and FATA and Faisalabad and Jhang in Punjab. One has to do some sustained reading of the radical Urdu press, which has a much larger circulation than the English newspapers, to assess the mood. And, it is Islamic radicalism backed by the gun. India should worry that this fire in Pakistan will spread to India as well. In fact one can see the signs of this happening already.
The truth is that the Pakistani security system still treats India and its own nationalists as the biggest threat. Perennially fearful of the India’s presence in Afghanistan, the Pakistani establishment feels it not only needs the Taliban but even nurtures them just as it nurtured elements like the Punjabi Lashkar-e Tayyeba in Kashmir. It cannot therefore be serious about curbing the Taliban. But the Pakistan army, no matter who rules and because of their own proclivities, cannot take action against the fundamentalists and extremists and also rely on them for survival. Yet, unless the Pakistan Army moves beyond looking for patchwork solutions to ensure its own primacy and decides to eradicate this menace, a spectre of total radicalism haunts Pakistan. The fear is that the Pakistan Army is now sufficiently and dangerously radicalized to want to change the system. We also need to remember that the US has given US $ 10 billion in military aid to Pakistan in recent years, ostensibly to tackle terrorism.

It is not easy but the civilised world must counter the scourge of terrorism. In a networked world, where communication and action can be in real time, where boundaries need not be crossed and where terrorist action can take place on the Net and through the Net, the task of countering this is increasingly difficult and intricate. Governments are bound by Geneva Conventions in tackling a terrorist organisation, whatever else Bush’s aides may have told him, but the terrorist is not bound by such regulations in this asymmetric warfare.

It has to be accepted that there can be no final victory in any battle against terrorism. Resentments, real or imagined, and exploding expectations, will remain. Since the state no longer has monopoly on instruments of violence, recourse to violence is increasingly a weapon of first resort. Terrorism can be contained and its effects minimised but cannot be eradicated any more than the world can eradicate crime. An over-militaristic response or repeated use of the Armed Forces is fraught with long-term risks for a nation and for the Armed forces. Military action to deter or overcome an immediate threat is often necessary but it cannot ultimately eradicate terrorism. This is as much a political and economic battle and also a battle to be fought long-term by the intelligence and security agencies, and increasingly in cooperation with agencies of other countries.

Ultimately the battle is between democracy and terrorism. The fear is that in order to defeat the latter, we may have to lose some of our democratic values.

Source : Eternal India , Ed by India First Foundation
Posted by Naxal Watch at 7:37 PM

[Muppalla]

http://specials.rediff.com/news/2008/no ... erabad.htm

[Muppalla]

http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/nov/26- ... arrest.htm

What is happening with law enforcement agencies? Mumbai police claims one thing and CBI denies.

[Avinash R]

Death for 11 Deendar men, 12 get life term
Sunday, Nov 30, 2008
http://www.hindu.com/2008/11/30/stories ... 180600.htm

Special Public Prosecutor terms judgment in church serial blasts historic

They committed heinous crimes against humanity and the country: judge

Sentence will convey a tough message to terror elements: prosecutor

BANGALORE: A special court in Bangalore on Saturday sentenced 11 Deendar Anjuman activists to death and 12 activists to life imprisonment for their role in the serial blasts that rocked churches in Karnataka during June-July 2000.

They were held guilty on November 21 this year by special judge S.M. Shivanagoudar after a long trial and were convicted for conspiring to wage war on the country. The court tried cases of explosions at churches in Jagajivanramnagar in Bangalore, Wadi in Gulbarga and Keshavapur in Hubli. It also tried one case with regard to a blast in a van on July 10, 2000, near Minerva Mills under Magadi Road police limits in Bangalore. Pronouncing the sentence at a packed court hall on the city Civil Court premises, Mr. Justice Shivanagoudar said the charges were not trivial and the accused had a specific motive of attacking churches, using explosives to execute their motive and intended to continue the onslaught if they had not been caught by the police. Thus, they had committed heinous crimes against humanity and the country and deserved the highest punishment.

The activists sentenced to death are Mohammad Ibrahim, Sheikh Hasham Ali, Hasnuzama, Abdul Rehaman Sait, Amanath Hussain Mulla, Mohammad Sharfuddin, Syed Muneerudin Mulla, Mohammad Akhil Ahmed, Ijahar Baig, Syed Abbas Ali and Mohammad Khalid Choudhary.

Sentencing the other 12 to life, justice Shivanagoudar, citing a recent Supreme Court verdict, said they should remain in jail till their death. The 12 are Mohammad Farook Ali, Mohammad Siddiqi, Abdul Habeeb, Shamshuzama, Sheikh Fardin Vali, Syed Abdul Khader Zilani, Mohammad Ghiyasuddin, Meerasab Koujalagi, Rishi Hiremath, Basheer Ahmed, Mohammad Hussain and Sangli Basha.

H.N. Nilogal, Special Public Prosecutor said, “The sentence will definitely convey a tough message to terror elements who are seeking to destabilise the country. This is a historic judgment and it highlights the efficiency of the police force.”

Four police officers — M.B. Appanna, G.R. Hiremath, B. Mahantesh and V.S. D’Souza — were involved in the investigation, and 27 Deendar Anjuman men from Bangalore, Hyderabad and Hubli were arrested. The trial was conducted on the high-security Bangalore Central Prison premises. Because of security concerns, Mr. Shivanagoudar pronounced the sentence through videoconferencing.




Church blasts: 11 get death
http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/Nov ... ntpagenews

DH News Service, Bangalore : A special court on Saturday handed out death sentence to 11 people and life imprisonment to 12 members of a banned religious sect for bomb blasts in several churches in the state in 2000.

The 23 belong to a sect called Deendar Channabasaveshwara Anjuman founded by Moulana Siddique in 1924 in Gulbarga district.

Besides Karnataka, the sect members are also accused of setting off explosions in churches in neighbouring Andhra Prad-esh and Goa.



23 Deendar Anjuman members held guilty

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage ... eld+guilty

Bangalore, November 22, 2008

A special court, hearing cases related to serial bomb blasts in churches in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Goa in 2000, has convicted 23 people belonging to Deendar Channabasaveshwara Anjuman group.

Of the 27 accused who were tried, four were acquitted.

Special Court Judge SM Shivana Gowdar who convicted the 23 in Bangalore on Friday, is yet to pronounce the quantum of punishment in the case which has been adjourned till December 3.

HL Nilogal, Special Public Prosecutor, argued for the state.

In 2000, six blasts were carried out by the group in Andhra Pradesh, four in Karnataka and one each in Maharashtra and Goa.

A three-member Corps of Detectives (CoD) team headed by DySP V S D'Souza investigated the church blasts at Wadi (Gulbarga District), Hubli, Bangalore and another blast in the state and filed a chargesheet before the special court.

The blasts were carried out by Deendar Channabasaveshwara Anjuman outfit founded in 1920s and the "conspiracy" was hatched at Hyderabad on October 1999, COD said.

The outfit was founded by one Hazarat Moulana Siddique alias Deendar Channabasaveshwara, the sources said.


Church serial blasts: 11 get death
30 Nov 2008, 0000 hrs IST, TNN
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indi ... 774113.cms

BANGALORE: A local court on Saturday awarded capital punishment to 11 people and life sentence to 12 others in connection with the 2000 serial blasts in churches across Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Goa.

Special sessions court judge S M Shivanagoudar, who had convicted 23 people last Friday, pronounced the judgment. All the convicts belonged to the Deendar Channbasaveshwara Anjuman sect. While kingpin Zia-ul-Hassan and his four children are in Pakistan, four others acquitted. Three of the accused died while trying to escape after planting a bomb at a Bangalore church.

Special public prosecutor H N Nilogal had pleaded for capital punishment for all the 23 convicted. The group had triggered six blasts in Andhra Pradesh, one each in Maharashtra and Goa and four in Karnataka.

The CoD (Corps of Detectives) team, comprising DSPs - V S D'Souza, M B Appanna, G R Hiremath and Manthesh - investigated the three blasts in Karnataka churches at Wadi, Hubli, Bangalore and the fourth blast in which the culprits were killed in a van and filed a chargesheet before the special court.

The accused were made to believe that blasts at churches in India would trigger a civil war between Hindus and Christians. A religious leader from Afghanistan would invade and conquer India, which would be converted into an Islamic country.

The serial blasts were carried out by activists of Deendar Channabasaveshwara Anjuman, founded in the 1920s. The conspiracy was hatched in October 1999 in Hyderabad, during the death anniversary of its founder Hajrath Moulana Siddiqui. Siddiqui's son, Zia-ul-Hasan and his four sons, who migrated to Pakistan, had visited Hyderabad during Siddiqi's death anniversary.

On June 8, 2000 two bombs had exploded at St Anne's Church, Wadi in Gulbarga district of Karnataka. The CoD filed chargesheet against 19 accused. Since four of them were absconding, 15 accused faced trial. On July 8, 2000, bombs exploded at St John's Luthern Church, Hubli. The CoD filed a chargesheet against 19 accused, of which 16 faced trial.

Next day, bombs exploded at St Peter Paul Church, JJ Nagar, Bangalore, where the cops filed a chargesheet against 29 accused, of which 17 faced trial. Within minutes, a van carrying people who planted the bombs also went off accidentally on Magadi Road, where two of the accused -- Zakir and Siddiqi -- were killed and another accused S M Ibrahim was injured.

Those who were awarded capital punishmen are: Mohmad Ibrahim (40), Bangalore; Shaikh Hasham Ali (30), Hyderabad; Hasnuzama (55), Nuzvid, AP; Abdul Rehman Saith (50), Chikkaballapur; Amanath Hussain Mulla (58), Bangalore; Mohammed Sharfuddin (37), Hyderabad; Sayed Muneeruddin Mulla (40) -- Hubli; Mohd Akhil Ahmed (29), Hyderabad; Ijahar Baigh (32), Hyderabad; Sayed Abbas Ali (28), Hyderabad; Mohmad Khalid Choudhary (32), Hyderabad

Origin of the sect

At the end of the 19th century, Hajarath Moulana Siddiqui, a scholar tried to integrate all religions - Hinduism, Islam and studied all the holy scripts - including Ramayana, Mahabharata, Koran, Vachana Sahithya and Puranas. At one stage, he even argued that Islam was the base for all the religions and later called himself as reincarnation of Channabasaveshwara.

He wrote many books in Urdu and Kannada and translated some of the holy scripts. This landed him in trouble. He went on to establish Deendar Channabasaveshwara Anjuman in the 1920s and set up an ashram at Hyderabad, where he lived till his death in 1952.

Though Anjuman Ashram preached co-existence of two religions, Siddiqui's eldest son Zia-ul-Hasan migrated to Mardan, Pakistan. He and his four children would visit Hyderabad during October for the birth anniversary of his father.

In 1990s, the ashram lost its relevance. Zia-ul-Hasan and his children hobnobbed with extremists in Kashmir and the members of Jamat Hizbullah Mujahiddin in Pakistan. Whenever they visited the Ashram, they would hatch conspiracies to carry out serial blasts in India.


News about their conviction here

[sum]

Real test of secularism for our media would be highlighting this judgment of 11 people getting a death sentence since it is a hugely significant case of terrorists leaving behind Hindu org pamphlets to distract the police after bombing the churches...
I have no doubt that even if a nuke had exploded in Mumbai and a RSS/"saffron" guy had even got a jail sentence for pickpocketing on the same day, t would have been flashed as a recurring ticker atleast.

[Gerard]

Police arrest Indian bandit widow

[Philip]

Failure of Indian intelligence: The buck stops nowhere

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/New ... urpg-3.cms

29 Nov 2008, 1602 hrs IST, IANS

Almost a dozen state police units and intelligence agencies were tracking down terrorist groups across India for the past two years but missed to

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detect the activities of the men who were involved in the Mumbai terror attack.

Though there were reports, based mainly on the interrogation of terrorists arrested in the recent past, about Mumbai being the next target, there were no specific leads about how the terrorists will strike.

The increasing failure of the intelligence agencies, both at the sate and the federal level, to prevent such attacks has emboldened the terrorists groups which have struck back, despite large scale arrests and security measures, at a frequency of two months in the recent past - Ahmedabad in July, Delhi in September and now Mumbai in November. These attacks were not carried out by the same group of terrorists but by a loose coalition of groups located in different parts of the country, activated and coordinated by a central command, likely to be outside India.

This singular inability is not caused by lack of information but a deep reluctance to share data and resources among the police and intelligence agencies and the pitfall of having a multiplicity of organisations, with separate command and control which, in essence, means the buck stops nowhere.

The most debilitating factor in the Indian intelligence war on terrorism has been the reluctance, and even refusal, to share information among the intelligence and security agencies. Along with an inept information-sharing architecture at the national level, this reluctance has proved to be the most critical flaw in counter-terrorism intelligence operations.

The problem came to the fore early this year when police in the Karnataka state of southern India arrested one Riyazuddin Nasir on charges of vehicle theft. Nasir would have been let out on bail for these minor charges but for a single intelligence official in New Delhi who decided to search the database for connections with terrorist activities. Nasir was found to be a Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami's (HuJI) operative and one of India's most wanted men.

It is not really difficult to see where the problem is: an intelligence structure which has yet to emerge from its debilitating colonial legacy and a complementary stranglehold of bureaucracy. The structure and operational philosophy of state police and intelligence units have not changed much since British days. They are mostly structured as agencies to protect law and order and spy on rivals rather than act as investigative and intelligence units. Criminal investigators are usually inserted into terrorism investigations only after an incident takes place. There are no independent anti-terror units carrying out both intelligence and investigations into terrorist groups at the state level.

At the top of the intelligence pyramid is the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS), headed by an all-powerful, politically-appointed National Security Advisor (NSA), who often has much more than terrorism on his mind. Intelligence operations within the country are carried out by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and its wide network of officers and men, all reporting to the Ministry of Home Affairs.

The ministry is headed by a cabinet minister and one or two ministers of state - besides a secretary and other senior officials - who often get tempted, at least close to the elections, to utilize the IB for assessing the electoral chances of their party while spying on their rivals. The IB is grossly under-staffed and the field operatives, numbering 3000, and analysts need to be updated on skills urgently.

External intelligence is the responsibility of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), working directly under the cabinet secretary but reporting to the NSA for all practical purposes. The RAW keeps a sharp eye on the activities of terrorist groups with bases in foreign countries. According to former IB joint director Maloy Krishna Dhar, RAW's reluctance to share information with the IB is legendary. There have also been instances where personality clashes have deterred effective coordination between the NSA and RAW chiefs. The RAW, for the moment, is riven with dissensions in the top rung and afflicted by unsavoury mud-slinging between various officers which have seriously affected its capability.

field offices and forward posts in the border areas as well as representatives in diplomatic missions. Since the DGMI has been historically part of the army, the air force and navy have individual intelligence units collecting and collating information relevant to their operations and bases. The Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), created in 2002 to correct this anomaly, is entrusted with the task of coordinating the whole spectrum of military intelligence but is presently short-staffed, poorly funded and burdened with an ambitious and expanding circle of objectives.

Paramilitary organisations like the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and Border Security Force (BSF) maintain their own intelligence units to support counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir and elsewhere. Their intelligence operations have often been stymied by the army's reluctance to share intelligence tapped from its wide network of informers and sources. Other government agencies providing physical security, like the Special Protection Group (SPG), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and National Security Guards (NSG), all maintain their own intelligence units.

At the bottom of the pyramid are the state police, whose intelligence networks remain the primary source of information and main agency for implementing action on the ground. The most critical element in this structure is the investigative branch of the local police forces. These go by various names, such as the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), the Special Branch or the Crime Branch. There is no uniformity in responsibilities or operational duties. Typically, these units carry out the investigation and prosecution of terrorist, and arms and counterfeit cases, placing them in the unique position of being able to detect the emergence of terror networks or coalitions.

Unfortunately, they remain the weakest link in the intelligence chain as these units carry the burden of acting as colonial-style law enforcement agencies and not as modern units capable of organising preventive measures based on intelligence collection. These forces are commonly afflicted with poor morale and problems related to accountability, pay and training. Even in metropolitan centres like New Delhi and Mumbai, the police-criminal nexus and pervasive corruption have rendered effective intelligence from federal agencies worthless.

There was clear intelligence available about terrorist attacks in Mumbai at least a month before the July 2006 commuter train blasts. This intelligence was not followed up on, nor were preventive measures put in place at railway stations. A week after the Mumbai bombings, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was quoted by the media as saying that "past responses have been inadequate in dealing with these problems which are of a different intensity, magnitude, scale and scope".

Of the several steps taken in recent years to overcome these outstanding difficulties, two held great promise. One was the creation of the National Technical Research Organization (NTRO), with a focus on collecting technical intelligence (TECHINT), cyber intelligence and cyber counter-intelligence. Beginning with RAW's Aviation Research Centre (ARC) assets, NTRO is rapidly expanding and strengthening its intelligence capabilities to fulfil this mandate.

On the other hand, the NTRO mandate adds one more agency to the mix, as the IB, RAW and the Indian Army's Signals Directorate will continue to Terror attack in Nariman House |

The second step was the establishment of a Multi-Agency Centre (MAC) and a Joint Task Force on intelligence within IB as a hub of India's counter-terrorism effort. The mission objective was to run an umbrella organization comprising state-level units called SMACs and the development of a national counter-terrorism database supported by state-level police-intelligence Joint Task Forces and inter-state Intelligence Support Teams. Conceived after the pattern of the US Central Investigative Agency's (CIA)Counter-Terrorism Center, the MAC was to be responsible for the joint analysis of intelligence flowing from different quarters and coordinating relevant follow-up actions.

Five years after MAC was approved, it is today composed of a skeletal staff and five SMACs, using a database hosted on a bare-bones computer system designed in-house, with no real-time links to state police forces or other intelligence agencies. There is no sign of the development of the comprehensive database on terrorists on which the entire counter-terrorism information grid was to be built. Senior intelligence officials have pointed out that the interrogation reports of 16,000 Islamist terrorists caught between 1991 and 2005 could prove to be a gold mine of actionable intelligence.

These inadequacies can be overcome by beefing up the present staff strength and widening the recruitment base to include the qualified technical personnel needed to develop, integrate and man the information grid. But progress is delayed due to unseemly bureaucratic wrangling over funding for an additional 140 positions at MAC. Added to this problem is the army's refusal to depute officials to the agency, citing disciplinary and administrative problems.

Difficulties like these and the tepid response of the state governments to a 2007 Supreme Court directive ordering improvements in the functioning of police and intelligence agencies continue to bedevil India's attempts to fashion an effective counter-terrorism strategy. Meanwhile, terrorist groups continue to display a marked advantage in adapting to newer technologies and modes of operation, allowing them to function more quickly and quietly than the Indian intelligence community.



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