LAHORE: The Pakistani authorities have further tightened the security of the five Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) operatives who are being kept at the Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi for their alleged involvement in the 26/11 Mumbai terrorists attacks following reports of a possible jail break attempt by their fellow jehadis in a bid to secure their release.
According to well informed intelligence circles in Islamabad, the Adiala Jail authorities have deployed highly trained additional troops of the Rangers and the Punjab Constabulary both inside and outside the jail premises besides installing anti-aircraft guns on the rooftops of the prison to foil any possible jail break attempt. The sources said the entry of all private vehicles in the jail has also been banned. The guards now check all the visitors and whatever eatables they bring for their loved ones languishing in the jail are either being scanned or searched or both. Around two dozen armed personnel of the Rangers, 85 Elite Force jawans and 85 jail guards have started patrolling around the jail round the clock, while 60 Rangers have been deployed inside the jail in addition to the police and jail guards.
According to the Adiala jail superintendents Asad Warraich, all visitors to the prison are being strictly checked while entries of vehicles in the jail premises had been restricted due to security concerns. He conceded that the jail authorities on Saturday night carried out a mock ‘security exercise’ by blaring emergency sirens to check the response time of the security personnel in case of an emergency or jail break in. A standard operating procedure (SOP) for the jail security has also been prepared in the wake of the intelligence reports regarding a possible jail break attempt. Besides, anti-aircraft guns have also been fitted at different points, sources said.
These measures have been taken in the wake of intelligence reports that the LeT operatives were planning a jail break attempt to ensure the release of the prime accused in Mumbai terror attacks Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the chief operational commander of the Lashkar-e-Toiba who had been arrested in December 2008. Lakhvi and five of his Lashkar associates are being tried inside the Adiala Jail premises by a judge of the Anti Terrorism Court in Rawalpindi due to security concerns. As a matter of fact, the Pakistani authorities investigating the March 3, 2009 bloody attack on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore are already trying to ascertain whether it was an attempt by the Lashkar-e-Toiba militants to hijack the bus carrying the team and bargain the release of their chief operational commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi.
Pakistani authorities investigating the 3/3 terrorist attack say there is increasing evidence to suggest that the operation might have been planned by the banned LeT operatives who actually wanted to take the sportsmen hostage, primarily to demand the release of their arrested commander and five others and their safe passage to the tribal areas, in exchange for the team players. The authorities say the Lashkar militants involved in the Lahore assault might have in their mind the successful hijacking of an Indian passenger aircraft in 2000 which eventually compelled the BJP government in India to release Maulana Masood Azhar, the chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammad who had been serving time in an Indian jail on terrorism charges.
Passion for jehad against India has been the defining feature of the life of Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, who has been accused of training the terrorists responsible for the Mumbai carnage. The importance of Lakhvi, the man who India suspects of masterminding the 26/11 attacks, to the terrorist network comes from the awe he inspires among the cadres who describe him as ‘imam (chief) of jehadis’ because of his family’s contribution to the cause. As a matter of fact, two of his sons had lost their lives in the Indian administered Jammu & Kashmir while ‘waging’ jehad against the Indian security forces.
Considered to be close to Jamaatul Daawa (JuD) chief and LeT founder Prof Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, Lakhvi told the Muzaffarabad-based daily, The Nation, in April 1999, “We are extending our mujahideen networks across India and preparing the Muslims of India against India. When they are ready, it will be the start of the breakup of India”. Months later, at the annual congregation of the LeT in Muridke, 30 km from Lahore, Lakhvi justified the launching of the fidayeen missions in Kashmir, “These…have been initiated to teach India a lesson as they were celebrating the Pakistani withdrawal from Kargil. Let me tell you very clearly that our next target would be New Delhi”.
On December 13, 2001, Zaki Lakhvi’s dire threats, willy-nilly, were implemented through a brazen attack on the Indian Parliament, raising the grim spectre of war in the subcontinent. And now, seven years later, as India and Pakistan are yet again engaged in a war of words, Lakhvi has been named as the person who inspired, planned and trained the terrorists responsible for the Mumbai carnage.
Long before India came into his crosshair, Lakhvi’s jehadi passion found a vent in the battle-ravaged Afghanistan. Born to Hafiz Aziz-ur-Rahman, a cleric linked to the neoconservative Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadis, on December 30, 1960, Lakhvi used to live in Chika 18L of the Rinala Khurd in Okara — the same south Punjab district from where Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, the terrorist arrested in the course of last month’s massacre in Mumbai, grew up.
Zaki Lakhvi’s stock in the shadowy world of jehad zoomed through a marriage between his sister and Abu Abdur Rahman Sareehi, a Saudi who was counted among the trusted lieutenants of Osama bin Laden. In 1988, Sareehi had established Lashkar training camps in Afghanistan’s Kunar and Paktia provinces, with the purpose of recruiting and training Afghans and Pakistanis to fight the Soviets. Hundreds of Pakistanis from the tribal area of Bajaur Agency flocked to join these camps, where Lakhvi was counted among the top trainers. Perhaps his clout in the Lashkar was also enhanced because of the Rs 10 million that Sareehi donated for the construction of the Muridke headquarters of the Lashkar-e-Toiba.
Lashkar’s participation in the Afghan jehad enabled both Hafiz Saeed and Zaki Lakhvi to endear themselves to the Pakistan intelligence establishment. The two were subsequently persuaded to deploy their foot soldiers for the jehad in Jammu and Kashmir, following the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan in 1999. Zaki Lakhvi was soon made the Lashkar’s operational chief in Kashmir, and his principal responsibility was to identify young men, indoctrinate them in jehad and then train them for specific missions across the border. It was in Kashmir the Lashkar-e-Toiba courted infamy, its name becoming synonymous with terror.
However, the Parliament attack and mounting international pressure prompted then President Pervez Musharraf to ban the Lashkar. At a press conference on Dec 13, 2001, Saeed declared he was resigning as LeT chief to establish Jamaatul Daawa (JuD), a charity organisation. He appointed Maulana Abdul Wahid Kashmiri as his successor, but retained Lakhvi as the LeT’s supreme operational commander. But the separation between the JuD and the Lashkar engendered animosity between Lakhvi and Saeed.
Lakhvi believed Saeed had floated the JuD to corner the massive funds that had been collected to wage jehad in Kashmir. He claimed the JuD had no rights to the jehadi funds as its charter was to preach and propagate Islam. Those close to Lakhvi, however, say he fell out with Saeed because of his decision to marry at the age of 64 a 28-year-old widow whose husband had died fighting in Kashmir. Saeed justified the betrothal saying he was providing shelter to the widow and her two kids.
The discord provoked Lakhvi to rebel against Saeed and float his own group, Khairun Naas (KuN) and shift to Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani administered Azad Kashmir. LeT fighters owing allegiance to KuN even took oath to assassinate Saeed. A year later, their minders in the Pak intelligence establishment brokered truce between them. Zaki Lakhvi, though, continued to reside in Muzaffarabad, where he trained the militants launched to wage jehad in Kashmir. In May 2008, five month before the Mumbai terror attacks, the US treasury department announced freezing of the assets of four LeT leaders including Lakhvi. On December 7, 2008, hardly ten days after the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks, the Pakistani armed forces arrested Zaki Lakhvi in a military raid on the JuD headquarters in Muzafarabad that was allegedly being used as the LeT centre of operations.
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