Author: Chidanand Rajghatta
Publication: The Times of India
Date: August 1, 2006
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1833219.cms
When India's national security establishment
and foreign office mandarins meet with interlocutors from Islamabad and Washington
over the next few days amid a spat over sponsorship of terrorism in the neighbourhood,
they could draw upon court proceedings in Lodi, California, to make their
case if their own material is considered suspect.
In an unprecedented development, the US Department
of Justice and the FBI earlier this year took the help of a satellite imagery
expert from the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) to nail the existence of
terror camps in Pakistan in a case involving a Pakistani father and son duo.
As part of the evidence at the trial, the
US government expert testified that jehadi camps existed and operated in various
parts of Pakistan from 2000 to 2005, and specifically opined that a series
of camps, including a well-known Jaish-e-Mohammed camp, were located in the
Balakot area of Pakistan.
The prosecution wheeled out the expert, Eric
Benn, an analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency, to make its case against
Hamir Hayat, while convicting him of planning to wage a jehad against the
United States after training at a terrorist camp.
After reviewing satellite imagery for the
jury, Benn said the mountainous location and description of the camp near
Balakot in northeast Pakistan are consistent with statements made by Hayat
during an interrogation by FBI agents last June, when he returned to the US
after two years of training and indoctrination in Pakistan. "The kind
of information I got out of the (Hayat interview) transcript is consistent
with the physical things I observed," Benn testified in US District Court.
"This would be a militant camp."
The testimony undermines Pakistan's insistence that there are no terrorist
camps in the country, a pro forma denial that is often buttressed by State
Department certification about being a frontline ally in the war on terrorism.
Pakistan has now been turned around charges that it hosts terrorist groups
to charge India with sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan.
It has also furnished its own listed of terror
suspects it wants India to apprehend and send back in lieu of the India's
20 most-wanted, including Dawood Ibrahim.
