Author: Chidanand Rajghatta
Publication: The Times of India
Date: August 1, 2006
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1833213.cms
After reviewing satellite imagery - which
the US used last year to prove the existence of jehadi camps in Pakistan in
connection with a case involving a Pakistani father-and-son duo - for the
jury, US government expert Eric Benn had said the mountainous location and
description of the camp near Balakot in northeast Pakistan are consistent
with statements made by accused Hamir Hayat. Hayat had been interrogated by
FBI last June, when he returned to 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 Islamabad being
a frontline ally in the war on terrorism. Pakistan has now turned around charges
that it hosts terrorist groups to charge India with sponsoring terrorism in
Pakistan.
It has also furnished its own list of terror
suspects it wants New Delhi to apprehend and send back in lieu of India's
20-most wanted, including Dawood Ibrahim.
Indian officials are yet to review the Lodi
case fully, but they say it has not gone unnoticed in anti-terrorism circles
that young men of Pakistani origin are being prosecuted on terrorism charges
in places from California to New York to Florida to Georgia to Toronto, Sydney,
London and other areas in Europe. "You never hear of Iranians or Syrians
being charged. It is always Pakistanis who have returned from Pakistan or
are heading there," said an official, who asked not to be named.
New Delhi also appears sore at US state department
for underplaying the gravity of Pakistan's role in terrorist activities to
achieve its (Washington's) political objectives. Such repeated certifications
of good behaviour, even in the face of evidence to the contrary from the US
defence and intelligence agencies, only serve to embolden Pakistan's military
establishment and undermine its civil institutions, Indian officials say.
Washington has also lost the plot in cases
like Daniel Pearl's murder where Pakistan's military establishment is holding
up execution of death sentence of the convict, Omar Sheikh, because of his
links with the ISI, they added.
In recent months, US law enforcement authorities
have cracked several cases, including the one in Virginia, of jehadis with
connections to LeT. Lashkar, New Delhi now says, is more potent than the al-Qaida
and virtually functions as al-Qaida's operating arm.