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Saturday, May 13, 2006

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Law & Order

The outfit is more inclined to recruit young men with a technical bent of mind to carry out lethal terrorist strikes, says Devesh K. Pandey

LeT relying on technology to enhance strike power

The background of the two alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militants arrested at Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station this past Monday is a pointer to the fact that the outfit is now more inclined to recruit young men with a technical bent of mind to carry out precise and lethal terrorist strikes.

During police interrogation, Feroz Abdul Latif Ghaswala alias Abdullah, allegedly disclosed that he had obtained a diploma in diesel mechanics besides doing a course in computers. His accomplice Mohammad Ali also turned out to be a hardware engineer. After Abdullah was initiated into terrorism, he was sent to Bangladesh for training in manufacturing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and then for advance training to a terrorist camp in Pakistan. He was taught to configure bombs using detonators and other devices.

The effort that goes into training new-recruits can be gauged from the fact that Ali was taught the ways of manufacturing weapons of destruction under the personal guidance of Azam Cheema, the LeT chief of operations in India outside Jammu and Kashmir, at Bahawalpur in Pakistan. Ali also went to Pakistan via Iran in December last and stayed with Cheema, who deputed a person named Aslam Barak for his training.

Aslam taught Ali the nitty-gritty of ABCD timer device and how to prepare circuits for remote control devices. He also learnt the technique of camouflage circuiting to fool bomb detectors, thus ensuring that the bomb was not defused.

Ali told the police that Cheema, himself a professor at a college in Faislabad, has set up a laboratory in his bungalow to teach militants about chemicals that can be used as explosives. He has also installed several computers there to communicate with militants through Internet.

These revelations, according to police officers, indicate that the outfit was relying heavily on new-age technological know-how to enhance its striking capability. In the previous cases also, the police found that LeT has been recruiting people with technical or academic background. About a year ago, the Special Cell of the Delhi police arrested an alleged LeT militant, Harun Rashid, who was a well-educated engineer. He allegedly revealed that he was an active member of the banned outfit, Students' Islamic Movement of India.

After completing his Bachelor of Engineering in 2002, he went on to join the Hindustan Aeronautical Limited (HAL) in Kanpur. He along with the top LeT militant, Abdul Aziz, and other terrorists once planned to target HAL that housed a number of aircraft. And then in December 2004, he quit HAL and went to Singapore where he attended a 22-week preparatory course in mechanical engineering at a maritime academy. The LeT chief in Bangladesh, Ghulam Yazdani, who was recently killed in an encounter with the Special Cell, was also pursuing engineering in Hyderabad when he was initiated into terrorism.

Recruiting men with technical expertise serves more than one purpose for the militant outfit. While it takes less time to train these men as they are more receptive, their strikes can also be much more lethal. In fact, in the past decade, the Capital has seen increasing use of sophisticated IEDs. Starting from crude bomb explosions -- in which fatalities were not high -- the terrorists have resorted to exploding plastic explosives causing heavy casualties. Also, they are using every new form of communication to stay in touch with their bosses for executing their deadly designs.

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