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.

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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Mumbai: Where are the 14 Other Pakistani-Trained Terrorists?

The lone gunman captured alive in Mumbai has told interrogators only 10 of the 24 young men in his year-long terrorist training course were sent to Mumbai last week, leaving 14 still in Pakistan, ready to strike again.

Security officials say they have been warned by Indian and U.S. officials that a second attack on the Indian capital city New Delhi is possible.

U.S. officials say the captured gunman’s account corroborates other intelligence that points to the role of the Pakistani-based Lashkar e Taiba, a group affiliated with al Qaeda that opposes Indian rule over the disputed state of Kashmir.

U.S. counter-terrorism officials say Lashkar e Taiba’s ability to operate with impunity inside Pakistan is one reason U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has warned Pakistan “this is a time for complete, absolute, total transparency and cooperation.”

A warning issued by U.S. intelligence agencies to Indian officials in mid-October suggests the U.S. may know the precise location of the training camps or headquarters in Pakistan, according to sources in the intelligence community.
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Pakistan Braces For Retaliatory Strike From India

Pakistan was bracing last night for a retaliatory airstrike by India against the sprawling headquarters of the al-Qa’ida-linked Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist organisation near Lahore.

As Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari warned the LET militants “had the power to precipitate war in the region”, India demanded that Islamabad hand over a list of about 20 people, including India’s most-wanted man Dawood Ibrahim.

India’s military chiefs were exerting strong pressure on the country’s political leaders to give permission to attack the headquarters, an 80ha site at Muridke, close to the Punjab capital of Lahore, just across the border from India.

The reports came as the Indian Government summoned the Pakistani high commissioner in New Delhi yesterday to demand “strong action” against the Pakistani militants who it says were responsible for last week’s attacks on Mumbai.

New Delhi warned Shahid Malik that India expected Islamabad to take “swift action” to deal with the evidence of involvement by LET operating from bases inside Pakistan.

India demanded that Islamabad extradite Ibrahim, a fugitive Mumbai mafia don who it believes has links to LET, the terrorist group long allied to Pakistan’s ISI spy agency.

India also asked for Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the LET founder, and Maulana Masood Azhar, the head of militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad, who was freed in exchange for passengers on a hijacked Indian Airlines flight in 1999.

Ibrahim, Mumbai’s most notorious underworld don, is the head of D-Company, a feared crime syndicate, and one of the world’s five most wanted men. He is widely believed to have worked closely with al-Qa’ida. He is also thought to have masterminded the 1993 Mumbai bombings, a series of 13 explosions that claimed 250 lives.

New Delhi issued its demands after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Pakistan to co-operate with India as she prepared to visit New Delhi to mediate between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

The heavily guarded LET complex near Lahore, known as the Markaz-e-Taiba Holy Centre, includes mosques and madrassas with more than 3000 students. Theoretically it is the headquarters of the Jamaat-ul-Dawah Muslim welfare organisation that is closely identified with LET.

Saeed, the LET founder and spiritual leader, lives in the complex.

Reports yesterday said that if India attacked the complex — possibly to kill Saeed — an attempt would be made to justify the action by pointing to the way in which the US was launching pre-emptive strikes inside Pakistani territory using unmanned drones to kill al-Qa’ida and Taliban targets.

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Timed Bomb Blasts Kill at Least 22 In New Delhi

Five small bombs ripped through several crowded markets in the span of 25 minutes Saturday in the Indian capital, killing at least 22 people and injuring more than 90.

The bombs were placed in trash cans and on bicycles in a downtown park and bazaars teeming with weekend shoppers. The attack was the 12th in India since October 2005. Read more