Pakistan evasive on ‘army link’ to Mumbai attacks

NEW DELHI: The 11,000 page chargesheet into the 26/11 Mumbai attacks which was presented in a Mumbai court on Wednesday has thrown up some interesting findings.
Investigations have revealed that the VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) calls made by the 26/11 terrorists to their handlers have been traced to a serving colonel of the Pakistani army.
However, the Pakistan army downplayed its link to the Mumbai terror carnage and said that the chargesheet filed on Wednesday is very vague on the link.
Speaking to TIMES NOW, Brigadier Azmat Ali, Pak army spokesperson said, “Chargesheet does not accurately identify armyman allegedly linked to 26/11. There are many Colonel Sadatullahs in the Pakistan army. We are trying to find out if this is true or it is all a media speculation.”
Though the chargesheet filed does not spell out the Pakistan army link explicitly, it does name the officer as Colonel R Sadatullah from the SCO.
The SCO, army sources say, stands for Special Communications Organization, a telecommunications agency of the Pakistani government which is run by officers from the army’s signals corps.
Another name mentioned in the chargesheet is that of `Major General sahab’ whose name crops up repeatedly in the taped conversation between the terrorists and their handlers.

Indian Mumbai dossier details gunmen’s calls with handlers

Pak says it replied to Mumbai dossier, India is waiting

New Delhi/Islamabad (IANS): Pakistan’s ISI agency has “given its feedback” to India about the Mumbai attacks, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has said but New Delhi Saturday maintained it had not received any response on the Mumbai terrorist attack dossier it handed over six days ago.

Gilani’s remarks Friday came shortly before US vice-president-elect Joe Biden arrived in Islamabad for talks with the Pakistani leadership on the tensions with India in the wake of the carnage in Mumbai, Aaj TV reported.

“India has given 52 pages (dossier) to the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and our ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) has given its feedback and information sharing. That has been passed on to India,” Gilani told reporters.

The prime minister said Pakistan and the US’ CIA had had a good working relationship in the past, adding: “If some other information is needed, we are ready for cooperation”.

However, India’s Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma said the government had not received any reply from Pakistan on the dossier.

“I will only comment after receiving the reply,” Sharma told reporters in New Delhi when asked whether the government had received any response to the dossier linking Pakistan-based elements to the Nov 26 Mumbai carnage.

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Here is the package compiled by Indian intelligence describing the specifics of the attack.

Details of macabre conversations of the gunmen who rampaged through Mumbai for three days have been revealed in the Indian government’s dossier against Pakistan, which has appeared on the internet.

The dossier, which was put online by Indian newspapers, had been the central plank of New Delhi’s diplomatic offensive against Islamabad, where it claims the 10 terrorists were trained, equipped and dispatched.

It charts the careful planning and blunders made by the gunmen. It has pictures of grenades, guns, pickles, tissue paper and a Mountain Dew bottle that were all made in Pakistan.

India has said the bloody mayhem, which left more than 170 dead, was directed by senior leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group.

Most eye-catching are the grisly exchanges between handlers in Pakistan and the gunmen in the Taj Mahal hotel. “We have three foreigners, including women,” the gunman said into the phone. The response was simple: “Kill them.” Gunshots rang out inside the Mumbai hotel, followed by cheering that could be heard on the tape.

The handlers told a team of gunmen who had seized a Jewish family to shoot hostages if necessary. “If you are still threatened, then don’t saddle yourself with the burden of the hostages. Immediately kill them,” the speaker said. The gunmen replied: “Yes, we shall do accordingly, God willing.” Six Jewish people were killed, including a rabbi and his wife.

The instructions expose the casual murderous intent of the attackers. “Keep your phone switched on,” a handler said in the midst of the siege, “so that we can hear the gunfire”.

It is clear those directing the attacks were following the minute-by-minute accounts on television and used the information to switch strategies, warn of incoming Indian attacks and to grab publicity. One gunmen in the Oberoi hotel is told: “Everything is being recorded by the media. Inflict the maximum damage. Keep fighting. Don’t be taken alive.”

The suicide squad were contacted from a so-called virtual number, which the Indian dossier states was 12012531824. This was generated by a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service based in the United States and paid for by a Javaid Iqbal, who gave a Pakistani passport as proof of identity.

The recordings reveal the attack lasted far longer than the commanders had anticipated. The handlers told the gunmen on 27 November, 12 hours after the assault had begun, that “the operation has to be concluded tomorrow morning”. But it was 36 more hours before it finished.

Last night news reports in Pakistan said the government had for the first time accepted that the lone surviving gunman, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, is a Pakistani citizen.

The Indian external affairs ministry raised the stakes by saying it wanted Islamabad to accept that all 10 gunmen were Pakistani nationals before it could consider a “joint investigation”.

India has said it wants Pakistan to hand over “conspirators” to face trial in India and to dismantle terrorist training camps. Pakistan says it cannot extradite its own nationals to India and is fighting terrorism.

Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, was untypically blunt in claiming that the attack on Mumbai was aided by “official” agencies in Pakistan, widely perceived to have been a jab at the Pakistani military’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Yesterday Lieutenant General Ahmed Shujaa Pasha, Pakistan’s intelligence chief, played down the threat of war over the Mumbai attacks and emphasised that terrorism, not India, was the greatest threat to the country.

“We may be crazy in Pakistan, but not completely out of our minds,” Pasha was quoted as saying in Germany’s Der Spiegel. “We know full well that terror is our enemy, not India.”

In the absence of trust the United States has been working as a broker between the two sides. Diplomats have shuttled between Islamabad and Delhi trying to convince both to find common ground.

While Washington is clear that it accepts Pakistan has a price to pay irrespective of its role in stabilising Afghanistan, US officials have been careful not to blame the ISI or the Pakistani military, putting diplomatic distance between themselves and New Delhi.

Analysts say the real issue is how to get India and Pakistan to work together on the issue of terrorism. “The problem is the rhetoric is boxing them in,” said Samina Ahmed, of the International Crisis Group. “All that happens is you limit the options when it comes to working together.”

This is a scanned copy of the 69-page dossier of material stemming from the ongoing investigation into the Mumbai terrorist attacks of November 26-29, 2008 that was handed over by India to Pakistan on January 5, 2009.

Evidence 1

Evidence 2

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Evidence 3

Some pages from the dossier were originally posted twice in another format. These have been removed. The complete dossier in the possession of The Hindu consists of 69 pages.

THE TERRORIST – Weaponary

Source: India today

AK-47 and variants

The terrorist operation in Mumbai was a confluence of time-tested tactics, ruthless ingenuity and accessories

The weapon,patented by Mikhail Kalashnikov in the year of India’s independence is available for as little as Rs 5,000, or the cost of a midlevel mobile phone, in Peshawar.

The AK-47 and its variants—the largest produced weapon in history—are the weapons of choice for terrorists.

It is rugged, compact and effective and boasts of a very high rate of fire. Can fire after being dragged through mud or soaked in water. The Chinese clone, the Type-56 which in an Indianism is called the AK-56, varies only slightly from the Russian original.

This is one of the most proliferated weapons. It takes months of training and thousand of rounds of practice to be able to wield this weapon with ease. A seasoned terrorist, for a speedy reload, always tapes a spare magazine to his AK-47.

Rucksack

From the four fidayeen who attacked Parliament to Kasab and his group, the ubiquitous haversack—stuffed with arms, ammunition and yes, dry fruits—has been the carrier of choice.

COMMUNICATION

Rapid advances in technology have given terrorists secure communication.

Satellite Phone
For close to a decade the satellite phone has been di rigueur for terrorists operating in India. It is similar to a cellular telephone, except that it bounces its signal off orbiting satellites and offers users hassle-free communication across the globe. After Indian intelligence agencies started monitoring satphones—remember General Musharraf’s self-congratulatory conversation with his deputy—terrorists kept scaling the technology ladder. First, the senior brass, now the lower ranks too, of the Lashkare-Toiba (LeT) use Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) phones—the equivalent of 3G mobile phones which India cannot intercept. BGAN service provider Inmarsat’s gateway is located in the UK which again makes it difficult to access intercepts.

Blackberry
Terrorists at the Taj kept in touch with their Karachi handlers through Blackberries just because it uses 256-bit encryption technology, which is difficult to crack. Even its Canadabased makers claim they cannot decode mails sent using their technology.

Grameen phone
Bangladesh’s Grameen phone made technology accessible to the common man. Based on a non-standard GSM technology which cannot be monitored, the poor man’s phone is in use by the ULFA and NSCN, becoming a major headache for Indian agencies.

Internet telephony
The voice over internet protocol (VOIP) phone which too cannot be monitored uses technology like Skype and allows internet telephony.

EXPLOSIVES

ARGES 84 grenades
During the 1979-88 Afghan war, the CIA and ISI concealed the origin of weaponry used against the Soviets by hand-filing ordnance factory stamps off millions of cartridges. But terrorists who operate in India blithely carry ARGES 84 grenades bearing the stamp of Pakistan Ordnance Factories, Wah. Can be thrown up to 50 m and has a kill radius of 5 m.

Improvised Explosive Devices
The Devil’s Seed is slang for landmines but could be used for the IEDs used in blasts recently in India as well. The IEDs used by the Indian Mujahideen resemble Claymore mines used by the military. Packed with RDX, ammonium nitrate and steel ball bearings, these can cause mayhem in marketplaces and commuter transport. Can be fitted into cars or pipes and triggered using phones.

NAVIGATION

Global Positioning System
Through a network of 32 satellites, a user can tell his exact location on the surface of the earth. Invaluable for the terrorist who wants to navigate undetected over the sea using ‘way points’—a series of fixed coordinates—or by land across the Line of Control.Amobilephone sized GPS receiver costs only around Rs 10,000.

Google Earth
Most places on earth,especially cities are rendered in fine detail by commercial satellite imagery that makes up the Google Earth library.Used routinely by terrorists, including the Mumbai killers, to study the ‘lay of the land’, recce targets and study approaches to them.

Steganographs
Messages hidden in pictures which can be deciphered only by a person who has the key. India does not have the capability to decipher these.Just two weeks before 26/11, intelligence agencies had come across a picture of Iqbal, the poet-philosopher of Pakistan, with a hidden message. Till date, they have not been able to decipher it.