Investigators arrest author of e-mail claiming responsibility, but bomb-makers and planter still elusive
Pravin Swami
National Investigation Agency detectives have arrested two Jammu and Kashmir residents who they believe participated in last week’s bomb attack at the Delhi High Court, in which 13 people were killed.
Kishtwar resident Amir Abbas, a university student, is alleged to have prepared an e-mail claiming responsibility for the attack; it was sent to newsrooms shortly after the bomb blast. Abbas, sources in the investigation agency said, is alleged to have handed over a portable disk drive to two other local residents on September 4 — three days before the bombing — with instructions to mail the text after learning of the attack.
Hilal Amin, a second resident of Kishtwar, a remote mountain town 248 km east of Jammu, has also been held on suspicion of having helped to draft the e-mail.
Shariq Ahmad and Abid Ahmed, both high school students, were charged in a Kishtwar court on Wednesday, for sending the e-mail from a local cybercafé.
Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram is expected to make a statement on the arrests later on Tursday.
Perpetrators still elusive
Abbas, investigators claim, was part of a larger network of conspirators involved in the attack. National Investigation Agency
detectives are, however, yet to locate either the source of the explosives used in the bombing, or the men who were thought to have planted the bomb outside the Delhi High Court’s visitors’ entrance. Final forensic reports on the nature of the explosive are awaited.
Even though
the e-mail was reported to have claimed responsibility for the bombing on behalf of the Harkat ul-Jihad-e-Islami, a Pakistani terrorist group that was merged into al-Qaeda two years ago, it bore no signature. The “from” field in the e-mail was simply “Harkat ul”, and the address was
[email protected].
Neither name has been used by terrorist groups in the past.
The e-mail said the perpetrators “demand is that Afzal Guru’s death sentence should be repealed immediately else we would target major high courts and the Supreme Court of India”.
Little further is known about the motivations of the arrested men, but an
investigation source said Abbas had been drawn into a jihadist cell after his uncle was shot dead by the police during the 2008 shrine-board violence in Kashmir — a communally charged movement that claimed the lives of dozens of protestors.
Both men are also related to surrendered members of terrorist groups in Jammu and Kashmir, but have no criminal record. Local intelligence sources also said neither had been suspected of links to terrorist groups.
Abbas’ family, as well as the families of the arrested teenagers, have denied they had any role in the Delhi bombing.
Afzal Guru, also a Jammu and Kashmir resident, is facing the death sentence for his role in the terrorist attack on Parliament House in 2001.
Tablighi Jamaat Links?
Investigation sources said the conspirators met through meetings of the Tablighi Jamaat — an ultraconservative organisation with a nationwide presence — although it is unclear if its activities had anything to do with the plot itself.
The Tablighi Jamaat, a pietist organisation which generally eschews politics, has no connections with terrorism.
However, several of its adherents have been implicated in terrorist operations linked to South Asia — among them Roshan Jamal Khan, a Mumbai resident imprisoned for an abortive 2008 suicide-bomb plot in Barcelona, and Muhammad Niaz, a Paris-based software engineer from Madurai, who was held by the police in Paris earlier this year.
Elements of the Tablighi Jamaat's rank-and-file are also alleged to have played a role in setting up the Indian Mujahideen — a Lashkar-e-Taiba linked jihadist group responsible for several urban terror attacks since 2005.
Fugitive Gujarat-based cleric Sufiyan Patangia, now thought to be hiding in Saudi Arabia, is alleged to have recruited several of the Indian Mujahideen's first members.
In a February 13, 1995 article in the Pakistani newspaper The News, journalist Kamran Khan quoted an office-bearer of the Harkat ul-Mujahideen, a jihadist group once active in Jammu and Kashmir, as saying “most of our workers do come from the [Tablighi] Jamaat”.
“We regularly go its annual meetings in Raiwind [Pakistan]. Ours is a truly international network of genuine jihadi Muslims. Our colleagues went and fought against oppressors in Bosnia, Chechenya, Tajikistan, Burma [Myanmar], the Philippines and, of course, India”.
