Police: Mumbai suspect admits Pakistan link
.. Maria identified the suspect as Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, from the Faridkot village in the Okara district of Pakistan's Punjab province. He is the son of Mohammed Amir Kasab, the police commissioner said. Maria said all 10 attackers were Pakistanis...
Kasab spent the past 18 months training at various camps run by Lashkar-e-Tayyiba -- a Pakistan-based terror group allied with al Qaeda. Kasab told police he joined the group, known by its acronym LeT, six months before he began training.
The training primarily took place in the Kashmiri city of Muzaffarabad, Maria said.
"He was told things like, 'You'll come in through this door, then go over here, then go out through that door,'" Maria told CNN. "Very, very detailed, explicit instructions. The gunmen were hand-picked, but there were no examinations per se."
All of the attackers were trained in Kashmir by
former Pakistani army officers, but apparently did not know each other, the investigator said.
"While in the camps they all had code names," Maria said.
" Kasab was trained to handle small arms as well as automatic weapons, the police commissioner said. He also received "explosives training, survival training, (and) nautical training."
During the last three months of the training, which focused on the Mumbai strike, Kasab was "shown photographs of the locations he was to target," including one of the city's main railway stations and a hospital."
Indian authorities Wednesday defused a bomb at the station -- one of the first locations targeted in last week's siege, CNN sister station CNN-IBN reported. They said Kasab had provided its location.
The officials said the explosive device was made from RDX, a powerful explosive. Four other RDX bombs planted during the well-coordinated attacks have also been defused and police believe there are no more, officials said.
He described the 21-year-old suspect as someone who would go unnoticed, with a criminal record in Pakistan only for petty theft. But he said Kasab is a cold-blooded killer.
Kasab told police investigators that he shot a small boy and, because he was crying, "He shot him again, and killed him, to shut him up," Maria said.
Kasab told the Indian investigators that the mission to strike Mumbai began on November 23 -- the Sunday before the attack -- when the attackers loaded a boat with their weapons, ammunition and fake Indian identification documents, Maria said.
A few days later, they hijacked a Pakistani fishing vessel near Indian international waters, and used that vessel to cover most of the approximately 500 nautical miles from Lahore, Pakistan, to Mumbai, he said.
This account was confirmed by Mumbai's police chief in a news conference on Tuesday, who also cited the suspect's police interview.
Maria said, according to Kasab's account, that the 10 attackers killed the captain and the crew, left them on the boat, and headed ashore in inflatable dinghies on Wednesday, the day of the attack.
Asked if Kasab's testimony could be trusted,
Maria said the suspect's description of the captain's body and the location of the attackers' satellite phone and global-positioning system matched what investigators found on the boat.
"The dead captain lay in the front of the boat face down with his throat cut, hands tied behind his back," Maria said.
He also noted that the weapons that were used in the Mumbai attack can be traced back to Pakistan.
Maria said none of the attackers was carrying their real identification documents because they did not expect to return home.
The police commissioner said the operation, as described by Kasab, was unique in its planning and execution -- not just in India, but worldwide. He said he expects Kasab to provide more details in his ongoing interrogation by Indian police, who have 90 days to charge him.
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They intend to charge Kasab with terrorism and ask a judge for the death penalty, which in India is carried out by hanging. They expect the whole process to cover the next year to year and a half.
Maria said
Kasab is not being tortured for answers, stressing that that would be counterproductive.
. I believe that there are 2 more terrorists sitting pretty in "5 istar luxury" of some government "safe house" spilling their guts out (literally too.. hopefully). They had to reveal about the third porki because he was caught while on camera.