[Dawn] An alleged key plotter in the 2008 Mumbai attacks now in Indian police custody had been living in Soddy Arabia...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face...
for two years and was "talent-spotting" for another "massive attack", an Indian police official said on Tuesday.
Sayeed Zabiuddin Ansari, also known as Abu Hamza and Abu Jindal, was cooled for a few years
Please don't kill me!
at Delhi airport on June 21 on his arrival from Saudi Arabia. Police revealed his arrest only on Monday, after interrogating him for five days about the three-day rampage in the financial hub of Mumbai that killed 166 people.
Police said Ansari helped coordinate the attack by 10 members of Pakistain's Lashkar-e-Taiba
...the Army of the Pure, an Ahl-e-Hadith terror organization founded by Hafiz Saeed. LeT masquerades behind the Jamaat-ud-Dawa facade within Pakistain and periodically blows things up and kills people in India. Despite the fact that it is
banned, always an interesting concept in Pakistain, the organization remains an blatant tool and perhaps an arm of the ISI...
(LeT) thug group from a "control room" in the Pak city of Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It may be the largest city in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
and also helped to train the gunnies.
Until his arrest, Ansari had been living in Saudi Arabia on a Pak passport, an official at New Delhi's anti-terrorist police unit told Rooters on condition of anonymity.
During his stay in the desert kingdom, Ansari sought to recruit volunteers for another Mumbai-style attack, the official said. He would not say where the planned attack was to have taken place or even whether India was the target.
Asked how India had learned of Ansari's whereabouts, the official said: "We had inputs and we acted on them." He would not elaborate, but some Indian media, quoting sources, said the United States, which has sought to deepen its counter-terrorism relationship with India, had provided the information.
The Hindu newspaper, quoting government sources, said the arrest came after months of painstaking diplomatic talks between Riyadh, Washington and New Delhi. Indian officials had travelled to Saudi Arabia to lobby for him to be handed over, it said.
It was not clear whether Ansari was in Saudi custody before his deportation from the kingdom or even how he had travelled to Delhi. One newspaper said the Saudis had asked India to send a plane to take him home.
The Saudi embassy in Delhi could not be reached for comment.
Indian media, quoting intelligence and police sources, said Ansari had admitted during interrogation to training the attackers, teaching them Hindi and speaking to them by telephone during the attack. He said Hafiz Muhammad Saeed
...who would be wearing a canvas jacket with very long sleeves anyplace but Pakistain...
, the suspected criminal mastermind of the attack and founder of the LeT, was present in the Bloody Karachi "control room", media quoted the sources as saying.
Washington has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to Saeed's arrest.
Ansari's arrest casts a fresh spotlight on Pakistain's history of backing thug groups as a tool of foreign policy.
| They say sunshine is the best disinfectant... |
Pakistain denies backing thug groups, but experts believe the security establishment maintains a relationship with LeT.
Pakistain's government has not commented on Ansari's arrest.
A Gulf-based source familiar with the Ansari case said Pakistain had exerted pressure on Saudi Arabia not to release him into Indian custody. "The ISI wanted Abu Hamza to be handed over to Pakistain rather than anywhere else," he said.
An Arab diplomat in Islamabad expressed surprise that Saudi Arabia had handed over Ansari to India.
"This makes no sense that the Saudis would help India and anger the Paks. The Saudis see Pakistain as their nuclear guarantee against Iran and they would never go against the ISI," he said.
| And yet they did. Perhaps the Saudis are annoyed at the new friendship growing between Pakistan and Iran, with that oil pipeline planned to run between the two. |
"This arrest is unlikely to have a negative impact on talks between India and Pakistain unless further investigations reveal that the cooled for a few years
Please don't kill me!
person was used by Pakistain to plot another terror attack on India," said B. Raman, a former top Indian intelligence official and now security analyst.
| There is that little stumbling block, neatly laid by Pakistan in its own path. |
Ten hard boyz arrived on the Mumbai shoreline in a dinghy on Nov. 26, 2008, before splitting into four groups and embarking on a killing spree. They held off elite commandos for up to 60 hours in two luxury hotels and a Jewish centre in the city. The only attacker to survive was sentenced to death in 2010.
A voice believed to belong to Ansari was recorded talking to the gunnies attacking the Jewish centre. He is reported to have told the attackers to convey to the media that the "attack was a trailer and the entire movie was yet to come."