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Key test for India-U.S. intelligence ties

MUMBAI: Federal Bureau of Investigation men have begun work in what experts believe will be a key test for the U.S. intelligence relationship with India — in the past plagued by false starts and dead-ends.

Electronic data harvested by Indian investigators, along with detailed accounts of the Mumbai attacks, have been handed over to an FBI team which arrived from the U.S. over the weekend, following the initiation of a criminal investigation in that country into the death of its citizens in last week’s massacre.

After an early snafu with Indian customs, the consequence of the FBI’s failure to inform its counterparts that the team would be carrying electronic equipment, its investigators have held several meetings with police and intelligence officials, and conducted field visits.

Indian police and intelligence officials say the specialised technical equipment brought in from the U.S. will help establish that voice-over-Internet calls made to Indian cell phone numbers used by the terrorists originated from computers in Pakistan. In addition, the FBI will also use its equipment to determine the origins, and first-point-of-use of the phone sets used by the terrorists.

FBI officials have also been studying the data on a U.S.-manufactured Garmin global positioning system used by the terrorists on their course across the Arabian sea to Mumbai, as well as call records on a satellite phone abandoned by the group on the hijacked fishing boat used in the penultimate stage of its journey.

Investigators from the FBI were first allowed access in India in 1997, two years after the Harkat-ul-Ansar front organisation, al-Faran kidnapped and executed U.S. citizens Donald Hutchings, German Drek Hasert and U.K. nationals Keith Manigan and Paul Wells. Among others, the FBI interrogated arrested terrorist Mohammad Musaib, a Pakistani national who provided the first hard evidence that the tourists had been killed.

Police in India and their counterparts in the U.S. have since cooperated in a number of criminal investigations. Indian investigators assisted in the prosecution of Thuggini Seethapathy, who in 2007 pleaded guilty to sourcing discounted prescription medicine from India for illegal sale over the Internet in the U.S. Indian national D. Ramakrishnan was arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau, which partnered in the investigation.

U.S. intelligence services also provided pinpoint warnings of an impending car-bomb attack on India’s embassy in Kabul earlier this year, allowing defences to be erected which saved dozens of lives.

India has long complained that the U.S. has been unwilling to cooperate in terrorism-related cases that could cause embarrassment to its key ally, Pakistan. The U.S. relies heavily on Pakistan’s armed forces, to facilitate its counter-terrorist operations in Afghanistan.

India believes that the U.S. failed to facilitate investigations into the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC 814 to Kandhahar — an operation in which several ISI-linked figures were involved.

Central Bureau of Investigation officers who visited Afghanistan in 2004 were given permission to interrogate the former Taliban Foreign Minister, Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil, but under what one officer called “highly controlled circumstances.”

The CBI was unable to question Taliban Aviation Minister Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour and Kandhahar corps commander Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Usmani, who in 2003 were rumoured to have been in close contact with U.S. forces as part of an abortive peace negotiation. Usmani was killed in a U.S. missile strike in 2006.

Even though credible evidence emerged that all five hijackers of the Indian Airlines flight — Mohammad Ibrahim Athar Alvi, Zahoor Ibrahim Mistri, Shahid Akhtar Sayed, Shakir Mohammad and Azhar Yusuf — were in Pakistan, the U.S. did not press its ally for their return to India.

Nor did the U.S. insist that Pakistan hand over the three men released in return for the lives of the passengers on board the flight, Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Mohammad Masood Azhar Alvi, his lieutenant Syed Omar Sheikh, and al-Umar chief Mushtaq Ahmad Zaragar.

Back in August 2001, India was dismayed when the U.S. dismissed as “overblown’ investigation which found that Sudanese national Abdul Rauf Hawas had been involved in a plot to blow up its embassy in New Delhi. According to the Delhi police, Hawas reported to Osama-bin-Laden lieutenant Abdul Rahman al-Safani, a Yemen national believed to have been involved in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Despite its assertion, the U.S. asked for enhanced security at the embassy.

Earlier, in January 1999, the FBI was granted access to alleged Bangladesh-based Lashkar operative Syed Abdul Nasir, who the Delhi police claimed had been tasked to execute bombings at the U.S. missions in Chennai and Kolkata. Later, FBI psychologist Frederick Gonnel carried out three rounds of lie-detector tests which all bore out the Delhi police’s account of events. No follow-up information was, however, provided to India on his Pakistan links.

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