LAHORE: While Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik has again stated that there was no proof of the Jamaatul Daawa (JuD) ameer Hafiz Mohammad Saeed’s involvement in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, the Pakistani Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has found substantial evidence directly connecting the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) to the Mumbai mayhem which had killed 166 people.
While citing well informed interior ministry sources, the Pakistani media reports say the findings provided the basis for the trial which started last week of five arrested LeT operatives by an anti-terrorism court inside Rawalpindi’s Adiala jail, including the chief operastional commander of the LeT, Commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi. An updated report on Pakistani investigation handed over to India on July 11 said the material recovered from LeT camps in Karachi and the coastal town of Thatta indicated that the terrorists were provided training and weapons by the militant outfit. The reports say the investigation conducted by Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) gives new and startling details about people involved in training and providing finances for the worst terrorist attack in India which heightened tensions between the two South Asian nations.
‘The investigation has established beyond any reasonable doubt that the defunct LeT activists conspired, abetted, planned, financed and established communication network to carry out terror attacks in Mumbai,’ said the report. Investigators here said they had recovered handwritten diaries, training manuals, Indian maps and operational instructions from the LeT camps. ‘The accused were running training camps for terrorists, providing sea and navigational training, conducting intelligence courses and directions for terrorist attack,’ the report said. According to the new details, training sessions, codenamed ‘Azizabad’, were held in an LeT camp in Karachi from where the investigators seized militant literature, inflatable lifeboats, detailed maps of the Indian coastline, handwritten literature on navigational training and manual of an intelligence course.
Another training camp in Thatta was housed in five thatched rooms about two kilometres from a creek from where small boats sail to the sea. The terrorists also received training in this camp. The investigators seized pocket diaries containing names of the accused and other persons and details of expenditure of the camp. Pakistan has already arrested and charged five LeT commanders including Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and Zarar Shah with planning and facilitating the bloody assault. The other three accused are Hammad Amin Sadiq, Mazhar Iqbal alias Al Qama and Shahid Jamil Riaz, all activists of LeT. The accused were produced on Saturday before a makeshift anti-terrorism court in the high-security Adiala jail in Rawalpindi.
‘There are sufficient oral, documentary, circumstantial and scientific evidence which directly connect the accused with the commission of the offence,’ said the charge-sheet prepared by the Pakistani authorities. Lakhvi, Zarar Shah and Mazhar Iqbal (also known as ‘Al Qama’) have also been charged with planning, preparation and execution of the attacks and operational handling of the 10 terrorists. Zarar Shah, of Sheikhupura district, is a computer expert and he was in charge of communication. Mazhar Iqbal (Al Qama), a resident of Mandi Bahauddin in Punjab, was the main handler. Lakhvi and Zarar Shah are believed to have confessed to their involvement in the attacks. But Pakistani authorities have never confirmed that publicly.
At the same time, there are those in the Pakistani media who maintain that the trial of the LeT accused should not be conducted by the anti-terrorist court judge in camera [inside the Adiala jail in Rawalpindi]. According to a leading English daily Dawn of July 30, given the sensitivity of the trial and the nature of the court proceedings, there may be national security issues at stake. “However, a blanket order keeping the media away is unnecessary. Pakistanis deserve to know the full facts of the case, the hows and whys and whens of what led up to Mumbai. The terrorist attacks jeopardised the standing of the whole country and brought it into a state of near conflict with its biggest neighbour, and as such Pakistanis ought to know as much as possible about organisations and networks in their midst that are bent on dragging them into a state of perpetual conflict”, the dawn editorial concluded.
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