TIMES NEWS NETWORK
New Delhi: The 26/11 terror attacks that killed 166 people and brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war was scripted by ISI officers and approved before its execution by al-Qaida commanders, according to a book just written by slain Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad.
The 40-year-old reporter in his book titled ‘Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban — beyond bin Laden and 9/11’ describes the Mumbai plan as one pushed through by Ilyas Kashmiri, a key al-Qaida ally with wide links with the Pakistan defence establishment.
Shahzad, who was an authority on terrorism in Afghanistan and the neighbourhood, says in the book that the plan was authored by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) officers and embraced and executed by Lashkar-e-Taiba.
“With Ilyas Kashmiri’s immense expertise on Indian operations, he stunned the al-Qaeda leaders with the suggestion that expanding the war theatre was the only way to overcome the present impasse. He presented the suggestion of conducting such a massive operation in India as would bring India and Pakistan to war and with that all proposed operations against Al-Qaeda would be brought to a grinding halt. Al-Qaeda excitedly approved the attack-India proposal,” Shahzad wrote in the book, excerpts of which were published in Karachi’s The Dawn newspaper on Wednesday. Shahzad’s friends and family believe the ISI may have had something to do with his kidnapping on Sunday and his death by torture and Shahzad himself had spoken of threats from the ISI.
The bureau chief of Asia Times Online was killed days after he had exposed links between Pak navy personnel and al-Qaida, explaining how the devastating attack on
the Mehran naval base in Karachi was engineered. He is believed to have been killed for “knowing too much” about how al-Qaida infiltrated the Pakistani defence forces.
The book, yet unavailable in India, is further proof of the close ties between Pakistani officers and al-Qaida. “Ilyas Kashmiri then handed over the plan to a very able former army major Haroon Ashik, who was also a former LeT commander who was still very close with the LeT chiefs Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi and Abu Hamza,” it says. “Haroon knew about a plan by Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence that had been in the pipelines for several months with the official policy to drop it as it was to have been a low-profile routine proxy operation in India through LeT. The former army major, with the help of Ilyas Kashmiri’s men in India, hijacked the ISI plan and turned it into the devastating attacks that shook Mumbai on November 26, 2008, and brought Pakistan and India to the brink of a war.”
According to a friend of Shahzad, the slain writer and he discussed militant infiltration in the lower ranks of defence forces. “He also expressed a fear that there would be a rise in violence as the security establishment is really shaky,” the friend was quoted as saying in the Dawn newspaper. Headley downplays ISI’s role in Mumbai attack Admits In US Court To Have Recced German Bakery In Pune Shalini Parekh |TNN
Chicago: In his latest testimony in the 26/11 trial in a US court, David Headley downplayed the role of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the Mumbai attacks. He also admitted to have recceed the German Bakery in Pune and Chabad houses in Delhi, Pushkar and Pune.
Testifying during the trial of Mumbai attack co-accused Tahawwur Rana that resumed on Tuesday after a long weekend, Headley said he made a video of the German Bakery which was bombed on February 13, 2010 killing 17 people and injuring 60 others.
The then popular hang-out for the young and tourists was attacked when Headley was in the FBI custody, and the blast was said to be a part of the Karachi Project — a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) venture with the Indian Mujahideen. Earlier, Headley had told the FBI that he didn’t carry out surveillance of the bakery, but later confessed to the Indian agents of National Investigation Agency (NIA) that he did survey it.
He also tried to pin more blame on al-Qaida militant Illyas Kashmiri rather than the ISI. His categoric responses, which at an earlier time implicated the ISI at all levels in the Mumbai attacks, reduced that involvement only to the lower levels of Pakistan’s espionage agency, indicating that the ISI chief and the upper levels of the organisation had no knowledge of these attacks.
The flipflops have led to Headley’s testimony beginning to lose a great deal of credibility, whether it was the ISI invo l ve m e n t through Major Iqbal and Major Sameer Ali, or his sworn oath to the US government as part of his agreement to cooperate with them by providing them any information that would protect or inform.
Parading a series of examples, the defence portrayed him as a wavering and unpredictable criminal, who changed his story even under oath.
C o m i n g across as blase and imp a s s ive, H e a d l e y agreed when the defence lawyer said: “You told your wife that you were cooperating with them so nothing bad happens to your family.”
And the most incriminating testimony from Rana’s point of view was a recorded conversation of Headley with his wife, where he said, “He (Rana) should be released, the poor fellow was stuck in this for no fault of his.”
Along with his effort to protect Hamza, his brother and his wife, Shazia, he came across in an FBI interrogation video, played in court, as a desperate man willing to drum up any arrests, or indictments, for the FBI in return for some protection to him and his family. At one point he even agreed to present Kashmiri a sword with a microchip in it, so that the militant’s whereabouts could be traced by US federal agents.
Headley in his testimony accused Kashmiri of hatching a plot to murder the CEO of Lockheed in an effort to halt the production of drones employed by the US military, that were constantly flying over northern Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“Kashmiri had other people who had done surveillance of him (the CEO) and he asked me if weapons were easily available here.’’ On being asked if he used Rana’s office computer to google the Lockheed CEO, Headley haughtily replied: “I can assure you that my research is more thorough than just googling something.”
Clarifying that he was merely updating himself on some facts, the research and plans were being made by Kashmiri.
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