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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Lashkar-e-Taiba activists arrested near Baghdad |
| 2004-04-01 |
| Arrests made earlier this month near Baghdad have blown the lid off the links between the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Islamist groups fighting the United States military. Hard evidence has emerged for the first time that terrorist groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir — groups still indulged by the Pakistani military establishment — have spread their theatre of operations to Iraq. Earlier this month, U.S. forces in Iraq arrested a Pakistani national, Dilshad Ahmad, a long-time Lashkar operative hailing from the Bhawalpur area of the province of Punjab. Ahmad had played a key role in the Lashkar’s trans-Line of Control operations, serving between 1997 and 2001 as the organisation’s commander of the forward camps from where infiltrating groups of terrorists are launched into Jammu and Kashmir. Sources here told The Hindu that Ahmad had made at least six secret visits to Lashkar groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir during this period. A close associate of Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, second-in-command in the Lashkar hierarchy, Ahmad had a key role in shaping the organisation’s ideological and military agenda. In 1998, he addressed a major Lashkar conference in Muridke, arguing for the need to extend the organisation’s activities outside Jammu and Kashmir. Ahmad is believed to have played a key role in building the infrastructure for the dozens of Lashkar cells, which have since carried out bombings in several major Indian cities. U.S. officials have until now managed to keep a tight lid on the news of Ahmad’s arrest, and diplomats at the American Embassy in New Delhi said they had no comments to offer. At least four other Lashkar operatives, however, are known to have been arrested in the intelligence-led operation that ended in Ahmad’s arrest. It is not known, however, just what the group was doing in Iraq, or if the arrests had anything to do with Monday’s apprehension of British nationals of Pakistani origin in London on charges of planning to execute a terrorist act. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |