Also see: THE NARIMAN HOUSE STORY - Must Read!
"Second Pakistani identified in terror attacks; New evidence suggests abuse of hostages" by Jeremy Kahn and Salman Masood, New York Times | December 5, 2008
MUMBAI - The Mumbai police yesterday identified a second Pakistani terrorist as an engineer of the bloody assaults on the city last week and confirmed that they were investigating whether a Mumbai man arrested on terrorism charges had scoped out some of the high-profile targets the attackers struck, leaving more than 170 dead.
Gruesome new evidence also emerged yesterday suggesting that some of the six people killed at the Jewish center in Mumbai had been treated savagely. Some of the bodies appeared to have strangulation marks and wounds on their bodies did not come from gunshots or grenades, the police said.
The new links to Pakistan added fresh complications to American diplomatic efforts to secure cooperation between India and Pakistan, which has questioned some of the evidence that Pakistanis were involved. Yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met in Islamabad with Pakistani leaders, a day after meeting with Indian leaders, to urge that the two countries work together to find the attackers and bring them to justice.
"What I heard was a commitment that this is the course that will be taken," Rice told reporters at Chaklala Air Base after meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. Rice's brief visit to Pakistan completed a delicate diplomatic minuet with visits to the region by the secretary of state and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who was in Pakistan on Wednesday and flew to India yesterday for meetings.
Americans crawling around all over the place, huh? What a stink!
In Mumbai, Rakesh Maria, India's joint commissioner of police, said that the second Lashkar-e-Taiba military commander who helped engineer the attacks was Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi. Maria said that the surviving attacker, 21-year-old Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, identified Lakhvi and said he helped indoctrinate all the attackers.
Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani guerrilla group that long focused on the disputed territory of Kashmir, is officially banned in Pakistan but, with a history of links to Pakistan's intelligence, has been hiding in plain sight for years. Yesterday, a spokesman for the group's leader, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, denied involvement in the Mumbai attacks, Pakistani news media reported.
That's a very ODD CHOICE of WORDS, huh?
Maria also said that it was believed that the attackers were in contact with Lakhvi on their journey from Karachi to Mumbai by sea and may have been during the attacks as well. Indian and American intelligence officials have already identified another Lashkar-e-Taiba operative, Yusuf Muzammil, as a mastermind of the attacks, and said he was in contact by satellite phone with the attackers during their journey.
Another police official, Deven Bharti, said the interrogation of Kasab, the captured gunman, was focusing on three lines of inquiry: the identities of the other nine; their training and planning; and whether they had local accomplices.
The suspected collaborator, Faheem Ahmed Ansari, was arrested on Feb. 10 in Rampur in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh in connection with a gun and grenade attack on New Year's Eve on a police camp. He was arrested with two others; all three are suspected members of Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Ansari told police interrogators in Uttar Pradesh that from fall 2007 to February 2008, he had been in Mumbai scoping out possible targets for the guerrilla group, including the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the old Victoria rail station.
The Uttar Pradesh police said that Ansari was arrested after he returned to Rampur to pick up weapons left behind from the New Year's Eve attack and take them to Mumbai for use in a later operation. Rice, during talks with Pakistani leaders, stressed that Pakistan needed to be seen as acting sincerely and quickly.
"Pakistan should also take the necessary steps to prevent any non-state actors from indulging in such activities against any country from its soil," Rice said, according to a statement from the Pakistani prime minister's office.
At the news conference in Chaklala, Rice said that the Indian government is concerned and determined "to find the perpetrators, bring them to justice, determined to prevent the next attack."
"I found the Pakistani leadership understanding the importance of doing so. Particularly in rooting out terrorists and rounding up whoever perpetrated this attack, from wherever it was perpetrated, whatever its sources, whatever the leads, because everybody wants to prevent further attacks," she said.
What does she know that we don't? What is coming, Condi?
What a LIAR, too, huh?
--more--"
