Pakistan suspects HUJI hand in Mumbai attacks

ISLAMABAD: The three member Pakistani Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) team probing into the Mumbai terror attacks on the basis of the Indian dossier has reportedly shifted the blame of the carnage on the Bangladeshi chapter of the Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HUJI) by holding it responsible for planning the attack and training the terrorists.

According to the Pakistani media, in their final report already submitted to the government, the FIA investigators have closed in on a Bangladeshi connection to the 26/11 terrorist strike, claiming that the Mumbai attacks were carried out by terrorists operating out of Pakistan, most likely from Bangladesh. However, the diplomjatic circles in Islamabad are of the view that any such conclusion by the Pakistani authorities would be treated by the international community as a mere eye wash and would strengthen the Indian contention that Islamabad was not willing to give up its state policy of using terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy to advance its geo-strategic agenda in the region.

Pakistan’s leasding English daily Dawn claimed in a front page report Thursday that the FIA report, to be handed over to India shortly, is most likely to conclude that the Mumbai terror attacks were handiwork of an international network of Muslim fundamentalists’ present in South Asia and spread all the way to Middle East. Although contents of the FIA report are being kept as a tightly-guarded secret by the Pakistani interior ministry, the newspaper said on good authority that the FIA would emphasise that the Mumbai incident is not strictly a Pakistan-India issue.

Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Wajid Shamsul Hassan has already claimed in an interview that investigations had revealed the terrorist attack was not planned in Pakistan. “Pakistani territory was not used so far as the investigators have made their conclusions. It could have been some other place”, Hassan said in the interview. The Pakistani media reports say the FIA investigators have already concluded that at least one of the Mumbai attackers was of Bangladesh origin. It has already been established that Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving gunman involved in the Mumbai attacks, was of Pakistani origin; but the identity of the other nine terrorists killed in the incident is yet to be finally determined, although India has been claiming that they were Pakistanis.

These reports say although the Bangladesh connection has emerged prominently in the FIA investigations, there are clear indications that some of the planning for the attacks was done in Dubai with local Indian support. The investigators are of the view that it would have been almost impossible to plan and execute an attack of this proportion and sophistication without the local Indian support — a fact India is shying away from. The two sets of questions given to India by Pakistan recently also touched this aspect. India has responded to only one set and that also indirectly through US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), while reply to the second set of questions is awaited.

The FIA investigators have reportedly suggested in their report that the attack may be remotely linked to Al-Qaeda’s international terror network. Harkatul Jehadul Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-B), suspected by the FIA of involvement in the Mumbai terror attack, had reportedly been established in 1992 with material assistance and inspiration from Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front (IIF). The HuI represents the Deobandi school of thought and its recruits are indoctrinated in the mould of radical Islam. By describing itself as the second line of defence for every Muslim, the Harkat aims to establish Islamic rule by waging war.

The Bangladesh chapter of the HuJI aims to establish Islamic rule in the country by waging war and killing progressive intellectuals. It draws inspiration from Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. At one point of time, it had issued a slogan, Amra Sobai Hobo Taliban, Bangla Hobe Afghanistan (We will all become Taliban and we will turn Bangladesh into Afghanistan). The HuJI supports, like the other Pakistan-based terrorist groups, the secession of J&K from India and its eventual accession to Pakistan, essentially through violence. It also propagates the idea of Islamic rule over all parts of India. Among the other objectives of the HuJI is the Islamisation of Pakistani society.

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