Posts Tagged ‘Mumbai Attacks’

Pakistan test fires short-range ballistic missile

ISLAMABAD: Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said Monday it the military successfully test fired a short-range ballistic missile capable of carrying atomic warheads.

The Hatf II (Abdali) has a range of 180 kilometres and carries nuclear as well as conventional warheads with “high accuracy”, the military said in a statement.

“It provides an operational level capability to Pakistan’s strategic forces, additional to the strategic and tactical level capability which Pakistan already possesses,” the statement said.

South Asian rivals India and Pakistan – which have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947 – have routinely carried out missile tests since both demonstrated nuclear weapons capability in 1998.

Pakistan’s arsenal includes short-, medium- and long-range missiles named after Muslim conquerors.

The neighbours were on the brink of nuclear conflict in 2002 over the disputed territory of Kashmir, but a slow-moving peace dialogue resumed last March after a three-year suspension following the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.

India and the United States blamed the attacks on Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba and Islamabad later admitted that the assault was at least partly planned in Pakistan.

Operational preparedness: India plans war games near Pakistan border

The exercise, codenamed Shoorveer or Brave Warrior which will also involve 200 Russian-made tanks, is due to begin in the Indian desert state of Rajasthan next month, army spokesman Colonel Jagdeep Dahiya told AFP.

“The exercise will be one of the largest manoeuvres conducted so far,” he claimed, adding that the latest warplanes would be factored into the drills, which are scheduled to end in May.

In a separate statement, the military said tanks, frontline combat vehicles, artillery, helicopters, fighter jets, drones, air-defence weapons and military radars would be part of the games.

Another military source said the event would be held less than 200 kilometres (124 miles) from the highly militarised border with Pakistan, with which India has fought three wars since independence 1947.

Dahiya dismissed fears the exercise – to be conducted by an elite military corps raised only for cross-border assault – would crank up tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad. “We do inform Pakistan in advance whenever such large-scale exercises are conducted by us,” the colonel claimed.

New Delhi froze peace talks started in 2004 with Islamabad, following the Mumbai attacks in 2008 by gunmen India claims came from Pakistan.  The slow-moving peace dialogues resumed early last year with cross visits by officials from both nations. 

Published in The Express Tribune, February 28^th, 2012.

Memogate commission: Elusive Ijaz begins testimony from London

Haqqani had offered the United States to conduct raids on Pakistani soil to capture or kill al Qaeda leadership – including Mullah Omer and Ayman al Zawahiri and Sirajuddin Haqqani – if the army and intelligence chiefs, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, were forced by the US to step down, Ijaz told the judicial commission.

Haqqani had also offered full cooperation with the Indian government in capturing culprits involved in Mumbai attacks under a new national security team palatable to the US, Ijaz told the commission chaired by Balochistan High Court Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa.

The other two members of the commission – Sindh High Court Chief Justice Musheer Alam and Islamabad High Court Chief Justice Iqbal Hameed-ur-Rehman – were also present at the virtual hearing.

Counsel’s objections

Haqqani’s counsel, Zahid Bukhari, objected to the video link, saying he wanted to be in London to cross-examine Ijaz during the process of recording his statement.

Since the British High Commission returned his passport late Tuesday evening, Bukhari said he could not depart for London.

The commission, however, dismissed the objection and asked Bukhari to travel to London whenever he wishes to.

Bukhari then objected to Ijaz reading his witness statement, at which the commission asked the latter to deliver it verbally.

I cannot recollect the exact dates and BlackBerry messages without the testimony in front of me, Ijaz said. Justice Isa asked him to state whatever was in his mind, and that he would be allowed to consult his testimony for accurate answers at the stage of cross examination.

Bukhari, however, was relentless.

“Look at him playing with his phone set. This is no way to record a witness statement,” he exclaimed.

The commission’s head then asked the secretary in London, Raja Jawad Abbas, to sit next to Ijaz and verify the messages on his mobile phone.

Ijaz’s testimony

Ijaz said that Haqqani first contacted him via SMS on May 3, a day after the Abbottabad raid, but that message had no relevance to the memo that eventually became the cause of the controversy.

Haqqani subsequently messaged him again on May 9.

When he called Haqqani after an exchange of a series of BlackBerry messages, Ijaz said the former envoy to the US was stressed, nervous, and sought his help to deliver a message to the then US military chief Admiral Mike Mullen to force the army and ISI chiefs to step down. “The Army wants to bring the government down,” Ijaz quoted Haqqani as saying.

Why did Haqqani need Ijaz to do this for him?

The former said it was impossible, in his official position, to get such a message to the Americans without risking the possibility of detection by ISI or military officers at the embassy in Washington, Ijaz said.

Haqqani believed Ijaz was “plausibly deniable” as a channel, and that no one would believe it if the exchange was made public. Ijaz said he subsequently contacted General James Jones on Haqqani’s request.

Gen Jones said he would not consider taking any message to Admiral Mullen if it was not in writing, and insisted on having a higher political authority than Haqqani, Ijaz added.

He continued but the commission adjourned hearing until 11 am on Thursday (today). The commission will first decide three applications, filed by Haqqani’s counsel, against Ijaz’s right to record his statement. The hearing will resume at 2 pm.

Retrieving the data

Before the hearing was adjourned, Attorney General Maulvi Anwarul Haq informed the commission that BlackBerry’s manufacturer, Research in Motion (RiM), has turned down the request to provide Ijaz and Haqqani’s data once again.

Despite giving a waiver, RiM cannot provide the data because it only maintains record for three months, Ijaz said.

The data can only be retrieved forensically from his handsets and he is willing to hand them over to a forensic expert appointed by the commission, Ijaz added.

(Read: Storm in a tea cup)

Published in The Express Tribune, February 23^rd, 2012.

Probing 2008 attack: March 12 likely date for commission’s departure

The federal investigation agency (FIA), on Saturday, submitted a fresh notification by the Federal Interior Ministry after the approval of the law ministry, giving new dates for the departure of the judicial commission for India.

The fresh notification was submitted to the Special Judge Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) Shahid Rafique, after removing objections raised by the leading defence counsel Khawaja Haris Sultan, The Express Tribune was told by Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali.

The judicial commission is supposed to cross examine the chief investigator of the Mumbai attacks as well as the magistrate who recorded Ajmal Kasab’s confessional statement. Kasab alleged that he, along with other attackers, was trained and sent by Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi among others to carry out terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

The commission comprising of two prosecutors, five defence lawyers, on FIA official as coordinator and one record keeper of the trial court, is also delegated to record the statements of the investigators and the doctors who carried out postmortems and medical legal reports of the injured in the Mumbai attacks.

The Indian authorities have already announced their team for the commission. Mumbai Chief Metropolitan Magistrate S S Shinda was nominated as the team’s head by the Mumbai High Court chief justice.

Meanwhile the trial court here, carrying out the trial of seven men including Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the alleged mastermind of the Mumbai attacks, put off the hearing till February 25.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 19^th, 2012.

US express concern over Hafiz Saeed’s public appearances

WASHINGTON: The US State Department has raised concerns about Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed’s public appearances, including at the Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC) rally held in Karachi earlier this week.

The State Department issued a brief press release on Thursday, In response to a question submitted earlier in the week, which said that, “Lashkar-e-Taiba and its front group Jamaatud Dawa, is internationally sanctioned because of its associations with al Qaeda.  We have and continue to urge the Government of Pakistan to uphold its obligations in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1267/1989.”

The release further stated that the UN resolution “calls for all countries to freeze assets of sanctioned groups, prevent the transfer of arms to them, and prevent sanctioned individuals from entering or transiting their territories.”

JuD has been functioning in the country as a religious and charity organisation. Post Mumbai attacks in 2008, the organisation was declared a terrorist organisation by the West, UN and India.

Talking to Express News, Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) senior leader Liaquat Baloch said that the DPC opposed the sanctions. He said that certain organisations, which were a part of the council, had been wrongly banned by a dictator, hinting at former President Pervez Musharraf.

Baloch justified his claim by saying the if a certain exile agreement – with former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif – and the NRO by the same dictator had been declared illegal, why should this ban be considered valid.

26/11 Mumbai attack was ‘pre-meditated’, prosecutors tell Indian SC

[[IMAGE: Evidence in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks case clearly shows that it was a “pre-meditated” assault and that the attackers were being guided by handlers from Pakistan, the Indian Supreme Court was told on Thursday. PHOTO: AFP/FILE]]

Evidence in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks case clearly shows that it was a “pre-meditated” assault and that the attackers were being guided by handlers from Pakistan, the Indian Supreme Court was told on Thursday.

Indian newspaper Hindustan Times reported that in Thursday’s hearing, the prosecution said that a diary with contents in Urdu and intercepts of telephonic conversations between the terrorists and their handlers establish that the attack was “pre-planned and pre-arranged”.

“From the diary and intercepts [...], three things are clear that the attack in Mumbai on November 26, 2008, was pre-meditated involving ten terrorists who were from Pakistan,” former solicitor general Gopal Subramaniam and special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam told a bench of Justice Aftab Alam and Justice CK Prasad.

Subramaniam, the Maharashtra government counsel, said that the according to the diary, which was recovered from the boat, Kuber, used by the terrorists to reach Mumbai, they had come together and upon reaching the city, they separated into five groups with specific targets.

“This diary clearly proves that the ten terrorists had come as a group and attacked Mumbai. They were from Pakistan. It was a pre-planned and pre-arranged attack as after reaching Budhawar Park they divided themselves into five groups and attacked their respective targets,” Subramaniam said, while seeking the apex court’s endorsement of the death sentence that has been handed down to 24-year-old Ajmal Kasab, the sole convict and surviving attacker from the attack.

I was denied fair trial, says Kasab

NEW DELHI – The lone surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attacks began a Supreme Court appeal against his death sentence on Tuesday by claiming that he had not received a fair trial.A lawyer read out a statement in court from Mohammed Kasab, one of 10 gunmen who laid siege to Mumbai in the attacks that lasted nearly three days and killed 166 people.The 24-year-old Pakistani has appealed for …

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India police seek breakthrough in Mumbai attacks

MUMBAI: Indian detectives scrambled for a breakthrough Friday into the Mumbai bombings that killed 17 people and left baffled police hunting for clues and suspects in the monsoon rains. There were fears that the torrential downpours that have hit the countries financial and entertainment capital since the rush-hour blasts on Wednesday evening may hamper the [...]

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LeT hand in Mumbai attack will compel India to again break off talks with Pak: Former CIA officer

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India will be compelled to again break off recently resumed talks with Pakistan if investigators determine that Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) played a crucial role in the planning and implementation of yesterday’s Mumbai attacks, a former CIA officer and Senior Research Fellow at Washington’s Heritage Foundation has said.
Three bomb blasts…

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Obama slams ‘outrageous’ Mumbai attacks

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama Wednesday condemned the “outrageous” attacks in Mumbai after three simultaneous blasts left at least 20 people dead and 113 injured in the Indian port city. “I strongly condemn the outrageous attacks in Mumbai,” Obama said, according to his spokesman Jay Carney, after the deadliest attack on India’s commercial capital since [...]

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Pak, India diplomats meet for peace talks

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India’s foreign secretary is in Pakistan for talks aimed at resolving long-standing disputes, including control of the Kashmir region. The two nuclear-armed neighbors are pushing ahead with a peace process that stalled after the 2008 Mumbai attacks. India blames Lashkar-e-Taiba for those attacks that killed 166 people. Indian foreign secretary…

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Indian foreign secretary due in Pakistan later this month

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India’s Foreign Secretary is due to visit Pakistan this month to discuss Kashmir, a Pakistani official said on Tuesday, the first formal talks between the two rivals on their core dispute since the Mumbai attacks in 2008 froze their peace process. India broke off peace negotiations with Pakistan after the…

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India accuses Pak of cross-border infiltration into Held Kashmir

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Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram has said that relations between Pakistan and India could not improve till the perpetrators of Mumbai attacks were not brought to justice. Talking to a delegation of Pakistani journalists in New Delhi on Wednesday, he said that all evidences regarding Mumbai attacks had been handed…

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Mumbai terror trial defense done after two witnesses

CHICAGO: Testimony in the trial of a Chicago businessman accused in the 2008 Mumbai attacks wrapped up swiftly Monday as defense attorneys called only two witnesses before resting their case. Tahawwur Rana is accused of providing cover for longtime friend David Coleman Headley, who has admitted to laying groundwork for the rampage on India’s largest [...]

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Mumbai terror trial in Chicago winding down

CHICAGO: A Chicago businessman accused of providing cover for a longtime friend who helped lay groundwork for the 2008 Mumbai attacks will likely not testify at his own trial, defense attorneys said Wednesday as proceedings in the high-profile terrorism case wound down. Attorney Patrick Blegen said Tahawwur Rana’s defense team was still making a final [...]

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ISI leadership not involved in Mumbai attacks: Headley

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CHICAGO (AFP) – The leadership of ISI spy agency was not involved in planning the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks, self-confessed plotter David Coleman Headley testified Tuesday.
Headley, who has pleaded guilty to 12 terror charges arising out of the attacks on India’s financial capital, said during the Chicago trial of…

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Pakistan ISI leaders had no role in Mumbai plot: court

CHICAGO: The leadership of Pakistan’s ISI spy agency was not involved in planning the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks, self-confessed plotter David Coleman Headley testified Tuesday. Headley, who has pleaded guilty to 12 terror charges arising out of the attacks on India’s financial capital, said during the Chicago trial of his childhood friend, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, [...]

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