Mumbai Terrorists Had List of 320 World Targets

The plotters behind the Mumbai attack, which left more than 170 people dead, had placed India’s financial capital on a list of 320 worldwide locations as potential targets for commando-style terror strikes, the Guardian has learned.

It suggests that Lashkar-e-Taiba, the outlawed terror group that planned much of the attack from Pakistan, had ambitions well beyond causing mayhem in India.

Western intelligence agencies have accessed the computer and email account of Lashkar’s communications chief, Zarar Shah, and found a list of possible targets, only 20 of which were in India.

Two of the November 2008 attack’s key planners – Shah and Lashkar’s operations chief, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi – are now in police custody in Pakistan.

Islamabad’s decision to bring criminal charges against nine men accused of involvement in the Mumbai attack has partly placated Indian officials. But officials in New Delhi have been warning that they want to see people brought to justice for terrorist acts.

“If the west can prosecute people for crimes against humanity in The Hague or use rendition to interrogate them in undisclosed locations then what is stopping them now? After all, [western] citizens were killed in Mumbai too,” an official said.

The US has been trying behind the scenes to co-ordinate intelligence exchanges between the two nuclear-armed rivals. The CIA has worked hard to be seen to help New Delhi – including by recovering phone numbers deleted by the terrorists on their satellite phones.

via Mumbai attackers had hit list of 320 world targets | World news | guardian.co.uk.

Low-Tech Terror Attack in Mumbai Could Spur Copycats in the West

The Mumbai attacks have prompted some Western officials to step up vigilance against the type of low-tech assault the 10 gunmen mounted last month.

Since the attacks in Mumbai, al Qaeda Web sites and chatrooms have lit up with aspiring militants urging more such attacks, according to the Washington-based SITE Intelligence Group. One message cheered “the heroes” of the attack for making “the enemies suffer,” including the U.S., the U.K. and Israel.

Historically, the group accused in the attack, Lashkar-e-Taiba, has focused on furthering Pakistan’s claims to the Kashmir region, disputed with India. Although its messages have a strong anti-American component, U.S. officials have seen the group as a lesser counterterrorism priority.

But current and former intelligence officials say they are worried the Mumbai attacks may reflect a broadening of Lashkar’s interests, and that would-be jihadis may copy the approach of the Mumbai attackers, who carried out their assault on foot using little more than machine guns, explosives and cellphones. Al Qaeda’s resurgent base in Pakistan also provides opportunities for collaboration with groups such as Lashkar, officials said.

David Cohen, the head of intelligence for the New York Police Department and a former senior Central Intelligence Agency official, said what used to be merely propaganda against the U.S. and Israel has now been “operationalized” by the Mumbai attacks. “It puts us on notice in a much more clear and direct way,” he added.

The NYPD has dispatched three officers to Mumbai to better understand the attacks because of concerns about copycats.

“It’s a very clear indication that we have the potential to be victimized by a group motivated by religious ideology that doesn’t use something sophisticated,” said John Cohen, a senior official in the Bush administration’s office for sharing information among intelligence agencies.

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Pakistani Official: Mumbai Attack Mastermind Captured

A suspected mastermind of last month’s deadly terror attack on Mumbai was arrested by Pakistani security forces in a raid on a militant camp, an official said on Monday.

Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi was among four men taken into custody following Sunday’s raid on a camp used by Lashkar-e-Taiba fighters outside Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir.

Security forces had raided the camp used by militants blamed for the Mumbai attacks and arrested more than a dozen people in Pakistan’s first known response to the assault.

U.S. and Indian suspicions that Pakistan-based militants carried out and plotted the attacks have sharply raised tensions between South Asia’s only nuclear-armed nations.

New Delhi says the Mumbai siege was carried out and plotted by militants belonging to Laskhar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani group accused of other attacks on Indian soil.

The New York Times, citing unidentified American intelligence and counterterrorism officials, reported in a story published Monday that Lashkar has gained strength in recent years with the help of Pakistan’s spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence.

The officials cited by the Times say the ISI has shared intelligence to and provided protection for the outlawed group, though there is no evidence to link the spy service to the Mumbai attacks.

Islamabad’s young civilian government has denied any of its state agencies were involved in the Mumbai attacks, but said it was possible that the militants were Pakistanis. It has pledged to cooperate with India, noting it too is a victim of terrorism.

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