NEW DELHI, Aug. 2 (UPI) -- The United States seems uninterested in helping India to extradite mafia boss Dawood Ibrahim from Pakistan because it does not want to upset relations with its front-line ally in the war on terrorism, Indian intelligence analysts said Tuesday. "Getting Dawood is not important for the United States as his arrest goes against the interest of Pakistan with whom Washington does not want upset its relations," said senior intelligence analyst Rajeev Sharma. He said as Pakistan cannot afford to violate any U.S. directive, Washington should ask Islamabad to arrest Ibrahim, who has been living in the Pakistani port of Karachi, and extradite him to India. Ibrahim, who was born Dawood Sheikh Ibrahim Kaskar, was Bombay's top underworld don before he fled the country for the safety of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. After he was implicated in the serial bomb blasts that rocked Bombay in 1993 he fled to Karachi and the Indian government has been pursuing him since then. After lying low for nearly a decade, Ibrahim surfaced in the news recently when his daughter Maharuk married the son of former Pakistani cricket captain Javed Miandad, Junaid, in a Dubai hotel July 24. It is not known if he attended the ceremony or not. Contradictory reports appeared in the Indian media about his presence. Some newspapers said it was a failure on the part of Indian intelligence agencies in identifying him as one of the burka-clad women present at the ceremony. "The marriage of Dawood's daughter irrespective of ... whether it was solemnized in Dubai or not, proves he is firmly entrenched in Pakistan and is a free bird despite the fact the U.S. designated him as global terrorist," said Sharma.
The Bush administration in October 2003 designated Ibrahim a global terrorist, saying he "has found common cause with al-Qaida, sharing his smuggling routes with the terror syndicate and funding attacks by Islamic extremists aimed at destabilizing the Indian government."
Indian intelligence officials say upon his first entry into Pakistan, Ibrahim was granted a welcome by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence.
"On his arrival in Pakistan from Dubai, Dawood was given a backdated passport in Rawalpindi and a 6,000-sq meter plot in the posh Clifton area of Karachi," a senior unidentified Intelligence Bureau official said. "His two trusted lieutenants, Abdul Razzak Memon alias Tiger Memon, and Shakeel Ahmed alias Chhota Shakeel, too were settled in Karachi by the ISI." He said Dawood was advised to take up the real-estate business, leading him to grab prime properties, often illegally, and to build shopping malls and apartments sometimes violating construction laws. "The day is not far when Dawood will emerge as a threat to the West not just India," said Sharma.
India has lodged complaints with Pakistan demanding the extradition of Dawood and his associates. It has also said Dawood has established links with terrorist organizations like Lashkar-e-Toiba, which operates in Kashmir, and al-Qaida. Dawood's activities and his links to Pakistan's ISI were pointed out by former Indian Home Minister L.K. Advani during a visit to India by Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in 2001. Pakistan denied any such person lived on its soil, however. Indian analysts complain Washington, despite designating Ibrahim a terrorist, has not done enough to ask Pakistan to extradite him. Others say, however, it in unclear what Washington can actually do.
"It is hard to know how much leverage the U.S. will actually be able to use in the case of Dawood Ibrahim to pave the way for his extradition to India," an unidentified senior Indian security official said.
He said the Jaish-e-Mohammad organization, which is on the U.S. State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations, had been hostile to U.S. interests for years, but Washington was unable or unwilling to push Pakistan to take any meaningful action against the group's chief Mohammad Masood Azhar. He said Pakistan had an interest in protecting Ibrahim because he knows too much. "I don't think he will be panicking just yet," the official said.
There is not much evidence, however, available in the public domain about Ibrahim's role in acting as a bridge between the ISI and various religious and terror groups. An Interpol report in 1996 said Anees Trading Co., a shell company run by him, was luring young, unemployed men from the subcontinent with the promise of jobs and sent them to terrorist training camps.