The Hindu : Front Page : Concerns grow on Lashkar designs

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Tuesday, Feb 12, 2008
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Concerns grow on Lashkar designs

Praveen Swami

4 members of cell used legitimate passports

NEW DELHI: Indian officials say passports recovered from members of a terror cell arrested over the weekend will increase pressure on Pakistan to deliver on its long-standing joint counter-terrorism commitments.

At least four members of the cell arrested in Uttar Pradesh, including two Indian nationals, travelled on legitimate Pakistani passports obtained for them by the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Intelligence sources said Islamabad must act against the Lashkar operatives responsible for obtaining them or fuel fears that Pakistan’s covert services are still supporting the internationally proscribed group.

Flew to Kathmandu

Gujaranwala resident Mohammad Imran Butta and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir-based Farooq Azam, who executed the January 1 fidayeen strike on a Central Reserve Police Force training camp in Rampur, flew to Kathmandu using these passports. Both men have told interrogators they then crossed the India-Nepal border by road, and had hoped to secure their escape the same way.

Fahim Ahmad Ansari, a Mumbai resident who was helping the cell plan attacks on the Mumbai Stock Exchange and Churchgate Railway Station, also held a legitimate Pakistani passport. Issued under the pseudonym Hammed Hassan, visa entries on the passport show that Ansari, like the two Pakistani members of the cell, transited through Kathmandu on his way to India.

Mohammad Sabahuddin, who helped execute the 2005 attack on the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore before going on to become the cell’s overall commander, used a Pakistani passport to travel between Karachi, Qatar, Dhaka and Kathmandu. Sabahuddin told interrogators he had left his Pakistani passport behind in Bangladesh, fearing it would be detected.

Investigators say Sabahuddin obtained the passport in 2005 from the Lashkar’s Pakistan-based director of terror operations against India, so far known only by the code-name Muzammil. Once in Bangalore, Sabahuddin carried out reconnaissance at several targets, before finally being drawn to the IISc after learning that its high-profile annual summit had no security cover.

Counter-terrorism officials say the Lashkar’s large-scale use of Pakistani passports is surprising, given Islamabad’s efforts to distance itself from terrorism directed at India. However, the discovery of the cell comes at a time when Lashkar polemic has been increasingly defiant of General Pervez Musharraf’s promises to rein in his country’s powerful transnational jihadist groups.

Speaking at Islamabad’s sector I-8 Quba Masjid on February 5, mid-ranking Lashkar operative Nasr Javed said his organisation wanted to “tell our Kashmiri brothers that the government of Pakistan might have abandoned jihad, but we have not. Our agenda is clear. We will continue to wage and propagate jihad until eternity.”

Identified by Pakistani analysts as a Lashkar fidayeen-team trainer, Javed went on to make clear this jihad was not limited to Jammu and Kashmir. India fears that if the mujahideen liberate Kashmir through jihad, he said, then it will be very difficult to keep the rest of India under control. Jihad will spread from Kashmir to other parts of the country and Muslims will rule India again.

Grouse against Musharraf

Several other Islamist leaders in Pakistan have used similar language in recent weeks. Amir Siddiqui, deputy prayer leader at Islamabad’s Lal Masjid Islamist stronghold, told a recent Kashmir solidarity gathering that President Musharraf had caused irreparable damage to the Kashmir jihad. Had he continued to support jihad in Kashmir, the mujahideen would have broken apart India.

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