ISI knew it all along

On a day when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh [Images] said the Mumbai [Images] attacks could not have been carried out without the support of official agencies in Pakistan, Intelligence Bureau sources told rediff.com that the Inter-Services Intelligence agency had detailed knowledge of the planning and execution about the November 26 attack in Mumbai.
No terror operation in India is a success unless it is backed by the ISI, the IB sources added.

Piecing together information obtained from the confessions of several terrorists arrested in India, the IB sources said it can prove that the Lashkar-e-Tayiba [Images] could not even have planned the Mumbai attacks without the ISI’s blessings, let alone execute it.

For the Mumbai attacks, youngsters identified by the Lashkar’s handlers were said to have been trained at camps in Muridke and Thakot, in Pakistan occupied Kashmir. The IB sources said intercepts suggest that every aspect of the training process was supervised by ISI agents and an army officer.

Terrorists who carry out attacks in Kashmir and Afghanistan are trained by ISI officers and army personnel, the IB officers said.

After completing the training programme in Thakot, the Lashkar, with the ISI’s help, sent the Mumbai attackers to Karachi where they underwent naval training.

This operation was supervised by the Musa company of the Pakistan navy’s Special Services Group.

The Musa company, under the ISI’s supervision, imparted training in rough weather sailing.

IB agents said on its own, the Lashkar could not have carried out an operation with such precision. The fighting skills demonstrated in the Mumbai attacks revealed that the training was extremely sophisticated and this could only have been achieved with the Pakistan army [Images] and the ISI’s sanction.

Sabahuddin Ahmed, the terrorist arrested for the January 1, 2008, attack on the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force in Uttar Pradesh’s [Images] Rampur district, told his interrogators that the ISI presence was visible at every stage of his interaction in Pakistan.

In his confession he said he had met several ISI officers and others from the Pakistan army. ‘During one meeting with a Colonel Kiyani, I was asked if I wanted to join the ISI and help collect intelligence. I did not say anything at that time,’ he told his interrogators.

Ahmed revealed that the ISI is extremely generous when its officers are pleased with an individual. ‘The ISI was pleased with the work I was doing. Kiyani was so happy that on seeing me he pulled out Rs 25,000 and gave it to me,’ an IB source quoted him as saying. Whether the Kiyani Ahmed referred to could have been Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who was formerly the ISI director, the IB source would not confirm to this correspondent.

Sources said Ahmed disclosed that every would-be jihadi is ‘received in Pakistan by the ISI. First we are taken to a camp where the ISI officers host a meal for us. We are then taken in their vehicle and dropped off at the Lashkar camp,’ he is said to have told his interrogators.

LeT wanted Pak link wiped out

India can understand only one language and that is the language of jihad.”

Thus said Zaki-ur-Rehman Laqvi, the Lashkar-e-Tayiba chief, to the Mumbai attackers while they underwent training in Pakistan.

Though the main aim of both the LeT and the Inter-Services Intelligence was to strike at India and create maximum destruction, under no circumstances did they want a Pakistan link cropping up in the end.

During the three days siege of Mumbai, the Lashkar handler, Abu Hamza who was sitting in Pakistan got wind of the fact that Ajmal Kasab had been apprehended by the police. The conversation between Hamza and Zarar Shah with the Mumbai attackers suggests that they wanted to ensure that Kasab was released.

Both Hamza and Shah kept in regular touch with the attackers in Nariman House which was used as the terror control room during the operation.

Nasir, a resident of Faizalbad and Imran a.k.a Abu Akasha, a resident of Multan, the two men at the Nariman House, took messages from the handlers in Pakistan and passed it on to the men who were at the Taj and the Trident.

IB sources told rediff.com that the conversation makes it clear that the LeT did not want to leave behind a single piece of evidence that would link the attack to Pakistan. They realised that Kasab had been apprehended. The handlers immediately contacted the men at the Nariman House and ordered them not to kill the hostages immediately. Instead they told them to keep them alive and make a demand to release Kasab as they realized that a man in custody would only strengthen the Pakistan link to the attack.

The handlers were heard telling the Nariman House attackers to make a demand to the Indian authorities to release Kasab immediately and leave him with them at the Nariman House.

However both Nasir and Akasha could not make the demand as they were engaged in a bloody battle with the security agencies. They then told the handlers that they were unable to make the demand and also informed them that they had the hostages with them. This is when the handlers gave up on their demand to release Kasab and ordered, “Kill them all.”