Author: Ashish Ray, Mateen Hafeez & S
Ahmed Ali
Publication: The Times of India
Date: December 2, 2010
Introduction: Two Others Arrested In Thailand
An international anti-terror operation netted
seven people in Spain and three in Thailand between Tuesday night and Wednesday
morning. They allegedly worked with terror groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba
(LeT), in staging the 26/ 11 Mumbai terror attacks that killed 166.
The Mumbai police crime branch said it was
yet to receive any official word on the arrests but sources said that New
Delhi had been kept posted. Officers in Mumbai, though, clarified that those
arrested could have helped the 26/11 terrorists procure fake ID cards of colleges
in Bangalore and Hyderabad and picked up the tab for internet phone connections.
In an email to TOI in London, the Spanish
interior ministry said eight of the 10 arrested were Pakistanis. They formed
part of a group based in Thailand and linked to LeT. The Spanish interior
ministry said the group stole passports-mostly from tourists in Barcelona-and
sent those to Bangkok to be doctored and later distributed.
The email added that the passports allowed
members of terror outfits enter European and other countries. The two Pakistanis
and the Thais based in Bangkok were the lynchpins of the illegal activity.
Mumbai police sources said they were not sure if the group had paid for the
Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) connections used by the 26/11 terrorists
and their Pakistani handlers. The Pakistanis held in Spain were identified
as Junaid Humayun, Atiqur Rehman, Jabran Asghar, Malik Iftikhar Ahmad, Mohd
Saddique Begum and Tanveer Arshad. They are believed to have links with LeT
and al-Qaida. The ones picked up in Thailand were identified as Muhammad Athar
Butt and Zeeshan Ehsan Butt. The other individual picked up in Barcelona was
a Nigerian-Babatunde Agunbiade-while the Thai national now behind bars in
Bangkok is Sirikanlaya Kijbumrung.
Anti-terror officers of the Spanish police
acted on a tipoff and swooped on the suspects in and round Barcelona. They
seized passports ready to be sent to Thailand and recovered computer and mobile
telephone equipment.
Preliminary reports said the arrested men
had helped the 26/11 attackers sneak into Mumbai through the sea route. "They
were part of the LeT's Thailand module," a Mumbai police officer said.
The Spanish police are still in the early
stages of their investigations and security agencies in India said they'd
need to wait for more details.
Investigators in Mumbai believe that these
arrests would help them piece together the jigsaw of fake ID cards recovered
from the slain terrorists. So far investigators have remained clueless on
how they sourced these.
Sources close to the investigation said LeT
had taken utmost care to outsource aspects of the 26/11 operation. Documents
were forged in Spain. Accounts were opened in New Jersey for VoIP phones and
payments made from somewhere else. "The planners realised that outsourcing
critical components of the operation would help ensure foolproof operations
and the footprints would be way to difficult to trace," a Mumbai police
officer said.
During the 58-hour siege of Mumbai, 284 calls
running into 995 minutes, were made by the terrorists using mobile phones
from the Taj Mahal Hotel, Oberoi-Trident and Nariman House to their handlers
in Pakistan.
These calls made over VoIP---a cheap way of
making international calls. These were traced to an IP address created with
Callphonex, a VoIP service provider based in New Jersey, US.
Payments for these calls were made by opening
an account in the name of one Kharak Singh from India. In reality, payments
were made on two occasions by wire transfer by Pakistani nationals Javed Iqbal
and Mohammed Ishtiaq.
