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| India-Pakistan |
| Arrests blow the lid off Lashkar networks |
| 2008-02-11 |
| A still unidentified Jammu and Kashmir-based Lashkar-e-Taiba commander and a complex network of Islamists recruited from across north and west India, worked together to execute two of the most high-profile terror strikes since 2005. Resources for both the Indian Institute of Science and Rampur attacks, investigators believe, were provided by the Lashkar’s long-serving Pulwama-based commander, so far known only by codenames ‘Sadaaq’ and ‘Aatif.’ Described by those who have met him as a Pakistani who speaks Urdu with a Karachi accent, ‘Sadaaq’ took charge of the Lashkar’s south Kashmir operations in early 2005. Sabahuddin’s links with ‘Sadaaq,’ the investigators say, date back to 2001, when the Lashkar operative was recruited by Mohammad Zubair, an Uttar Pradesh-based cleric. Zubair, operating under the codename ‘Salaar,’ was among the organisation’s key assets in northern India. A year later, Sabahuddin dropped out of Aligarh Muslim University and left for Pakistan. For the next three years, Sabahuddin trained in Lashkar-run training camps under the tutelage of a commander codenamed ‘Muzammil,’—the man believed to have overall charge of the organisation’s offensive operations outside Jammu and Kashmir. He returned to India in mid-2005, travelling through Nepal with a Pakistani passport. Posing as medical student, he rented a house in Bangalore. Tasked with planning attacks in the city, Sabahuddin was drawn by the publicity surrounding the IISc’s 2005 convention. Observing that the institute had almost no security cover, he decided a single terrorist would be able to shoot at delegates. ‘Sadaaq’ then despatched ‘Hamza’—who Sabahuddin had seen working in ‘Muzammil’s’ office—to execute the strike. Zubair was killed in mid-2006 by the Jammu and Kashmir Police, near the Line of Control in Handwara. His deputies, however, dispersed, and investigators were unable to locate much of the network. By the end of the year, it regrouped under Sabahuddin’s command reporting to a Pakistan—based Lashkar-e-Taiba handler its members knew by the codename ‘Yusuf.’ Sabahuddin drew on his Bangalore experience to execute the Rampur attack. His deputy, Mohammad Sharif, collected the assault rifles used in the attack from a Lashkar sympathiser’s home in Pulwama. He then ferried them, assembled inside his luggage, to unsuspecting relatives’ homes in Kunda and Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh. When ‘Sadaaq’ was informed that the weapons were in place, he sent Pakistani operatives Imran Boota and Farooq Azam to execute the attack. Using the aliases, Amar Singh and Ajay Malhotra, both travelled to Rampur by train and bus from Jammu and Kashmir, arriving just hours before the attack. Both men carried legitimate Pakistan passports, to facilitate their escape through Nepal. Interestingly, Sabahuddin and Sharif told the investigators that the operation almost had to be aborted after the group lost its way to the CRPF camp in the darkness. While the attack was scheduled to begin at 10:00 p.m. on December 31, 2007, it eventually commenced at 2:00 a.m. on January 1, 2008—an error that ironically facilitated the attack, since even the few guards present had fallen asleep. Police sources say that the group started planning a series of attacks in Mumbai—including a possible strike on the stock exchange—when they were arrested. Fahim Ahmad Ansari, a Mumbai resident who held a Pakistan passport issued under the pseudonym Hammad Hassan, was to act as the local conduit, much as Sabahuddin did in Bangalore. Sunday’s arrests have demonstrated that the Lashkar’s global infrastructure in Pakistan remains intact, despite claims that President Pervez Musharraf’s regime is working to curtail its operations. In December, the authorities in Singapore arrested four locals who were recruited to train with the Lashkar in Pakistan, while an Indian was arrested in Qatar last year on similar charges. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 All terrorist "roads" lead to Phakestan - from India, Afghanistan, Britain, Norway, Germany, the US, some in Africa and South America. Seems that should be a good enough reason to dismember this rat's nest, once and for all. Things will continue to be "interesting" until it's done. Bangladesh needs to "disappear" at the same time. Nothing says these "nations" need to continue to exist, especially when they make clandestine war on others. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2008-02-11 13:35 |