Mumbai gunman sentenced to death in India
attacks only as “Major General Sahab,” which the Mumbai police was unable to identify.
The charge sheet may fall short of providing definitive proof of Col. Ullah’s involvement, Internet experts said at the time. It is possible to route Internet traffic to disguise its origin: other IP addresses used to access the gunmen’s telephone service account were traced to Chicago, Kuwait, and Moscow.
The criminal investigation begun by the Mumbai police identified thirty-seven suspects — including the two army officers — wanted for their alleged involvement in a plot that struck thirteen targets across Mumbai, including two luxury hotels and an orthodox Jewish outreach center, terrorizing the city for sixty hours. All but two of the suspects, many of whom are identified only through aliases, were Pakistani.
Pakistan’s partial admission
Blakely correctly notes that it was a sharp reversal from previous denials that the Pakistani government, in January 2009, admitted that the sole surviving gunman was a Pakistani citizen and that the attacks were at least partly plotted on its soil.
In response to information conveyed to Pakistan by the Indian government, Pakistan admitted that the Mumbai attacks were planned partly in Pakistan, but said Islamabad must now dismantle the “infrastructure of terrorism” on its soil. “This is a positive development,” a Indian ministry of external affairs (MEA) statement said in response to Islamabad’s admission and announcement that it had filed a case against nine suspects, six of them in custody.
New Delhi blamed the Mumbai attacks on the Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and in December 2008 handed over information which Islamabad had used to investigate the assault. “It remains India’s goal to bring the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks on Mumbai to book, and to follow this process through to the end,” the foreign ministry statement said. “We would also expect that the government of Pakistan take credible steps to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism in Pakistan,” it added.
Yielding to international pressure, Pakistan admitted for the first time that the Mumbai terror attacks were “partly” plotted on its soil and launched from its shores. In the face of evidence provided by India, Islamabad also acknowledged a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) links to attacks that began on 26 November, after a series of flip-flops on the credibility of the Indian dossier and initial denials of a Pakistani hand.
Pakistan made its first formal response to the Indian dossier on the attacks blamed on terrorists based on its soil at a press conference by interior ministry chief Rehman Malik. Malik identified Hamad Amin Sadiq, a 38-year-old man hailing from Punjab province, as the “main operator” in facilitating and coordinating the Mumbai attacks and named two others — one Khan and one Riaz — as accused in the case. He admitted that nine terrorists had sailed from Karachi port for the Mumbai attacks in three boats. In all, cases have been filed against nine persons, six of them already in custody as of his press conference, on charges of “abetting, conspiracy and facilitation” of a terrorist act.
The admission about planning of the attack in Pakistan came when Malik said that “some part of the conspiracy” took place on its soil. “About the crime and the criminals, some part of the conspiracy has taken place in Pakistan. According to available information most of them (planners and conspirators) are in our custody,” he said. Suggesting links between the Mumbai attacks and the LeT, he said the LeT operations commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, dubbed by India as the alleged mastermind and demanded for trial in Mumbai, and its communication expert Zarar Shah was “located and are under investigation.”
