Comment by Riaz Haq on January 6, 2015 at 9:32am

One of the prime suspects in last year's Mumbai terrorist attacks suddenly withdrew his confession today and claimed he had been framed by police.

Mohammad Ajmal Kasab is on trial in Mumbai accused of being the lone surviving gunman from the attacks, in which 166 people died over three days in November last year.

Prosecutors are adamant that Kasab is the young man seen clutching an automatic rifle and striding through the city's railway station in a picture that has become the iconic image of the attacks.

Kasab insisted today that this was not the case, smiling as he set out his new version of events. Far from arriving by sea with the other gunmen on the night the attacks began, he said, he had pitched up nearly three weeks earlier hoping to break into the Bollywood film industry and had been picked up by the police three days before the attacks for being Pakistani.

It was his misfortune, he claimed, to be the doppelgänger of one of the gunmen shot dead by police. Lacking a culprit to put on trial, they had taken him from his cell the day the attacks were launched, shot him to make it look as if he had been injured in the crossfire and then framed him, he said.

"I was not present in the Chhatrapati Shivaji terminus and I did not open firing inside the railway station. I have never seen an AK-47 in my life, or even a rubber dingy," he told the astonished courtroom.

It was a remarkable twist, even in a week in which David Headley, the man alleged to have masterminded the attacks, was accused by Indian intelligence sources of acting as a double agent for the CIA and al-Qaida.

It is not the first time Kasab has changed his story. The 21-year-old, who faces the death penalty if convicted, initially denied the charges. He surprised everyone – including his lawyer – by changing his plea to guilty in July and regaling the court with an account of how he had travelled to Mumbai by boat from Pakistan with his fellow gunmen to launch the attacks. He would rather be hanged in this world than face God's punishment in the next, he explained.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/18/mumbai-suspect-withdra...

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 8, 2015 at 4:29pm

n a shocking disclosure a former officer of the Indian home ministry has alleged that Indian government had orchestrated the two high-profile terrorist attacks which New Delhi has blamed on Pakistan-based militant groups.


According to India’s Times of India (TOI) newspaper, RVS Mani, who as home ministry under-secretary signed the affidavits submitted in court in the Ishrat Jahan ‘fake encounter case’, has said that Satish Verma, until recently a part of the Central Bureau of Investigation-SIT probe team, told him that both the 2001 attack on Indian parliament and the 2008 Mumbai attacks were set up “with the objective of strengthening the counter-terror legislation (sic)”.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/577017/startling-revelations-mumbai-par...

In what is certain to escalate the already vicious fight between the CBI and the IB over the IshratJahan "fake encounter case", a former home ministry officer has alleged that a member of the CBI-SIT team had accused incumbent governments of "orchestrating" the terror attack on Parliament and the 26/11 carnage in Mumbai.

R V S Mani, who as home ministry under-secretary signed the affidavits submitted in court in the alleged encounter case, has said that Satish Verma, until recently a part of the CBI-SIT probe team, told him that both the terror attacks were set up "with the objective of strengthening the counter-terror legislation (sic)".

Mani has said that Verma "...narrated that the 13.12. 2001(attack on Parliament) was followed by Pota (Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act) and 26/11 2008 (terrorists' siege of Mumbai) was followed by amendment to the UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act)."

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Govt-behind-Parliament-att...

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 11, 2015 at 8:13pm

Alleged #Mumbai terrorist Ajmal Kasab is alive, claims key witness #India #Pakistan http://tribune.com.pk/story/1008065/ajmal-kasab-is-alive-claims-key... …

In an unexpected turn, a key witness in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks claimed Ajmal Kasab, the lone gunman caught alive after the attack and later hanged, was alive.

“Mudassir Lakhvi, the headmaster of a primary school in Faridkot, where Ajmal Kasab studied for three years told the court that he taught Kasab and he is alive,” a court official told PTI on Thursday

Pakistan-born Kasab was hanged at Yerwada jail in Pune in the western state of Maharashtra in 2012 after President Pranab Mukherjee rejected his pleas for mercy.

Kasab, 25, was one of 10 gunmen who laid siege to the city in attacks that began on November 26, 2008, and lasted nearly three days, killing 166 people.

The hearing of the case was held on Wednesday, by an anti-terrorism court (ATC) judge at Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi.

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“The headmaster caused a lot of embarrassment for the prosecution team by claiming that Ajmal Kasab is alive. He was supposed to present the record of the period during which Ajmal Kasab studied in the school and other relevant record but talked otherwise. The prosecution also failed to properly examine him,” the official said.

According to the official, the headmaster who belonged to the native town of the accused Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, may have testified under Lakhvi’s pressure.

The headmaster during Wednesday’s hearing maintained a statement that he gave in May 2014, that Kasab was still alive and claimed that he could also be produced in court if needed.

However, the headmaster made no reference to Kasab, neither did he mention if the accused was the same person who studied in the school in Faridkot.

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 10, 2016 at 10:18am

#US, #UK rubbished #India’s ‘evidence’ against #Pakistan in #Mumbai attacks, says Wikileaks https://shar.es/16yvz0 via @sharethis

Following Pathankot attack, the Indian media and government authorities have been referring to Mumbai attack as Pakistan’s work despite the fact that the Wikileaks had shown both the US and the British authorities trashing Indian so-called evidence against Pakistan.

Publicly both Washington and London have been shy to embarrass India and avoided rejecting her allegation against Pakistan but the Wikileaks showed the two trashing Indian claims about the involvement of either Pakistan’s prime intelligence agency- the ISI- or even senior leaders of a proscribed organisation.

Wikileaks, which contained secret State Department wires, had quoted former US ambassador to Pakistan Anne W Patterson as writing to the State Department that India had presented insufficient evidence against the senior leaders of now proscribed Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Anne W Patterson had mentioned in a wire to the Washington that Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and other investigators had insufficient evidence for prosecution against Lashkar-e-Taiba’s Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Zarar Shah and Mazhar Iqbal Alqama.

Patterson had even said that FIA was forced, as a result of political pressure, to arrest and charge the three LeT leaders and that FIA was still without solid evidence to begin a formal trial.

Some of the wires generated by US embassy in India had also made the India’s case on Mumbai attacks doubtful. Charge Geoff Pyatt was quoted to have written to Washington: “Indian officials remain convinced that Pakistan is behind the July 11th Mumbai attacks, and worry that the US is setting the bar too high for “solid evidence” of Pakistani intelligence involvement.”

The leak had even quoted National Security Advisor MK Narayanan as admitting that there are some pieces of the puzzle still missing. “He (Narayanan) said he is hesitant to say the evidence is “clinching”, but it is pretty good. Narayanan used the opportunity to reinforce the popular perception here that Pakistan is to blame for the attacks, while answering criticism that the foreign secretary’s and Mumbai police’s statements about the investigation were not backed by solid proof…”

The wire, generated from New Delhi, had also shown the Indian politicians reminding the Americans that India had sided with US on the issue of 9/11 despite the absence of concrete evidence.

The wire said: “At dinner with CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence Carmen Medina on October 23rd, former National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra raised the issue of the US response to the Mumbai blasts.

‘We backed you when you decided to take action in Afghanistan after September 11,’ he said. ‘Your evidence after 9/11 was no less circumstantial than our evidence after 7/11 in Mumbai.’

He went on to criticise the US “double standard”, arguing that we treat Hizbollah one way, and the Pakistan-based United Jihad Council very differently. The bottom line, Mishra said, is that there is a widespread perception that the US is doing nothing to help India fight terror.”

Another leak, a wire sent from US New Delhi embassy to Washington, reflects on British doubts about Indian’s evidence against Pakistan.

The leak said, “While Indian press continues to pin blame on Pakistan, observers and diplomats in Delhi are asking the same question: was the ISI behind the Mumbai attacks? While there are clear links between the attacks, perpetrators and the extremist group LeT, and likewise, there are links between LeT and the ISI, there is no clear evidence yet to suggest that ISI directed or facilitated the attacks, according to the British High Commission.”

Now yet again after Pathankot attack, Indians have started blaming Pakistan claiming that they have evidence of Pakistan's involvement.

- See more at: http://www.thenews.com.pk/print/89034-US-UK-rubbished-Indias-eviden...

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 5, 2017 at 8:02am

 Who really committed #MumbaiTerrorAttack 2008? #LeT? #Indian agencies? #Pakistan agencies? Will we ever know the truth? Is it a betrayal of #India? http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/06/08/the-betrayal-of-india-a-c...

Elias Davidsson 

Incompetence is a fact of life, but there are times when the incompetence theory is strained to the breaking point and it is more rational to posit deliberate deception. In the case of the Mumbai investigation, Davidsson depicts its failures as going well beyond incompetence.

Neither the police, nor the judge charged with trying the sole surviving suspect, made public a timeline of events (188-189; 688-689). Even the most basic facts of when a given set of attacks began and when they ended were left vague.
Key witnesses were not called to testify. Witnesses who said they saw the terrorists commit violence, or spoke to them, or were in the same room with them, were ignored by the court (e.g., 279 ff.).
Contradictions and miracles were not sorted out. One victim was apparently resurrected from the dead when his testimony was essential to the blaming of Pakistan (229-230). A second victim died in two different places (692), while a third died in three places (466). No one in authority cared enough to solve these difficulties.
Eyewitnesses to the crime differed on the clothing and skin color of the terrorists, and on how many of them there were (328-331). No resolution was sought.
At least one eyewitness confessed she found it hard to distinguish “friends” from terrorists (316). No probe was stimulated by this odd confusion.
The number of terrorists who committed the deeds changed repeatedly, as did the number of terrorists who survived (29 ff.; 689).
Crime scenes were violated, with bodies hauled off before they could be examined (682-683).
Identity parades (“line-ups”) were rendered invalid by weeks of prior exposure of the witnesses to pictures of the suspect in newspapers (101; 582).
Claims that the terrorists were armed with AK-47s were common, yet forensic study of the attack at the Cama Hospital failed to turn up a single AK-47 bullet (156).
Of the “hundreds of witnesses processed by the court” in relation to the attacks at the CaféLeopold, Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Oberoi-Trident Hotel or Nariman House, “not a single one testified to having observed any of the eight accused kill anyone” (40).
Indian authorities declined to order autopsies on the dead at the targeted Jewish center in Nariman House. The dead, five out of six of whom were Israeli citizens (427), were instead whisked back to Israel by a Jewish organization based in Israel, allegedly for religious reasons (453). Religious sensitivity seems to have extended to a large safe at the crime scene, which the team also transported to Israel (454).
(3) Extreme secrecy and the withholding of basic information from the population, with the excuse of “national security”

The surviving alleged terrorist had no public trial (661).
No transcript of his secret trial has been released (670).
One lawyer who agreed to defend the accused was removed by the court and another was assassinated (670).
The public was told there was extensive CCTV footage of the attacks, despite the mysterious malfunctioning of the majority of CCTV cameras on the days in question (97-98; 109 ff.; 683 ff.); but only a very small percentage of the claimed footage was ever released and it suffers from serious defects–two conflicting time-stamps and signs of editing (111).
Members of an elite Indian commando unit that showed up with between 475 and 800 members to battle eight terrorists (534) were not allowed to testify in court (327; 428-429).
The “confession” of the suspect, on which the judge leaned heavily, was given in secret. No transcript of this confession has been released to the public and the suspect later renounced the confession, saying he had been under threat from police when he gave it (599 ff.; 681).....

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 4, 2023 at 8:12am

"The people I spoke to at the Taj hotel said that some of those boys (terrorists involved in the 26/11 attack) had been seen on the premises regularly and as a result, on the day of the attack, nobody had bothered to give them a second glance," (A.S.) Dulat, left, who headed the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency, and also served in the Intelligence Bureau, India's domestic intelligence agency, tells Rediff.com Senior Contributor Rashme Sehgal in the concluding part of the interview.

https://www.rediff.com/news/interview/amarjit-singh-dulat-where-mod...

I made a trip to Mumbai in December 2008 as a private citizen.

The people I spoke to at the Taj hotel said that some of those boys (terrorists involved in the attack) had been seen on the premises regularly and as a result, on the day of the attack, nobody had bothered to give them a second glance.

Two of the boys had already been staying there (in the hotel).

Isn't that very alarming?

David Headley was coming and going all the time. It was the same with the boys. When people are coming and going, they are seen as regular customers.

The Americans had given a tip off regarding the attack?

The Americans had given a tip off in September. The Bombay (police) Special Branch was alerted and it was up to them to take action.

Every time an alert happens and nothing happens, the alert weakens. That is the issue.

People want action right then and there and want to be taken to where the terrorists are.

Questions on just how much the Americans told us on the role of Pakistan on the whereabouts of these boys in the days leading up to the attacks still remain.

The handling of hijacking of IC-814 was another major blunder.

Yes, we goofed up on that. The goof up took place in Amritsar. The plane should not have been allowed to take off from there because after that we had no choice.

The DG Punjab wanted Delhi to take a call and Delhi wanted Punjab to take a call.

But the buck rested with Delhi and it was for them to have taken a quick decision.

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