Author: Robert F. Worth and Hari Kumar
Publication: The New York Times
Date: December 5, 2008
The Indian police foiled an attempt to destroy
landmarks and wreak havoc in Mumbai early this year, breaking up a cell of
Pakistani and Indian men who were directed by the same two Pakistan-based
militant leaders they have accused of organizing last week's devastating attacks
here, the police said.
The foiled plot also involved Lashkar-e-Taiba,
the Pakistani group accused of last week's attacks, the police said. That
suggests that the militant group conceived its plan long in advance and that
it has made deeper contacts with radical Indian Muslims than investigators
have been willing to concede.
It also pointed up another significant security
lapse by Indian intelligence and police forces, who months ago had glimpses
of a blueprint for the Mumbai attacks and even a strong indication of the
intended targets.
Investigators have said they were looking
into the possibility that the men who carried out last week's assault - all
believed to be Pakistani - had local, Indian accomplices.
They have not found any so far but say they
are looking at one of the men in the foiled plot, Faheem Ahmed Ansari, an
Indian from Mumbai, as a possible suspect. Officials said that he and five
men suspected as co-plotters were initially arrested in connection with an
attack on a police camp in northern India.
After his arrest, Mr. Ansari told investigators
he had also carried out reconnaissance of targets in Mumbai.
It is not clear whether that research played
a role in the planning of last week's attacks, which authorities now say killed
163 people.
The six men who were arrested are still being
held by the authorities. Mr. Ansari was detained in February.
Mr. Ansari was caught with hand-drawn sketches
of 8 to 10 Mumbai landmarks, apparently based on his reconnaissance trips,
said Amitabh Yash, the superintendent of the special police task force in
the state of Uttar Pradesh, where the men were arrested.
He and the other accused men had AK-47 rifles,
pistols, grenades and ammunition, Mr. Yash added, the same kinds of weapons
carried by the 10 known attackers who terrorized Mumbai last week.
Other similarities in the plots are striking.
The six men suspected in the February plot were accused of plotting an assault
on Mumbai's main train station - one of the first targets struck last week
- along with the city's stock exchange, major hotels and other sites.
Like the men in last week's attack, members
of the earlier group did not expect to return alive, they told investigators.
They also told the police they had been directed
by two Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders: Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, and a man known alternately
as Yusuf or Muzammil, documents show.
Those two men planned and coordinated last
week's attacks, and continued to guide at least 10 men who carried out the
assault by phone as it unfolded, investigators in India say.
After his arrest, one of the six men told
investigators he had received four months of training from Pakistan's main
spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, the police said.
Indian police officials said they had not
been able to verify the claim.
The ISI helped found Lashkar-e-Taiba two decades
ago, though its current links to the group, which has been officially banned,
were not clear. The belief that the spy agency is colluding with Pakistan-based
terrorists is nearly universal in India.
India has not accused the Pakistani government
of a hand in the Mumbai attacks, but it has furnished evidence of Lashkar's
involvement, and it has pressed Pakistan to act decisively against the group.
With public anger at Pakistan swelling here
in India, tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals have risen to a level
not seen in years.
Lashkar has denied any role in the attacks.
But it has been trying in recent years to recruit more Indian Muslims to its
cause, Indian officials said. It has been aided by local communal grievances
against the Hindu majority, as well as the global growth of hard-line Islamism.
During the assault last week, one of the attackers
is said to have mentioned a 2002 Hindu massacre of Muslims before killing
one of the hostages, in an apparent attempt to identify his cause with that
of Indian Muslims.
A senior American counterterrorism official
said it was highly likely that local accomplices were involved. "They
couldn't have gotten to the places they did without local help," the
official said, speaking on the condition on anonymity because of the continuing
inquiry. "They just moved too quickly. They had to have had more assistance
on the ground."
The American official said the investigation's
review on the site of where the attackers came ashore and any evidence recovered
from the bodies of the dead gunmen may reveal additional clues regarding any
local support.
After his arrest in February, Mr. Ansari told
investigators he grew up in Mumbai, and in 2006 moved to Saudi Arabia for
work, like many young Indians. An imam at the local mosque inspired him with
talk of jihad.
Later, Lashkar recruiters approached him,
and before long he was traveling by sea to Pakistan, where he underwent physical,
military and intelligence training in Lashkar camps, Mr. Yash, the police
task force leader, said. He was given a Pakistani passport and other documents
to ease his movements.
Mr. Yash added that interrogations of Mr.
Ansari and his fellow suspects "told us a lot about the interactions
of Lashkar and the ISI," he said "They were absolutely intertwined."
Under the direction of Mr. Lakhvi, the Lashkar
commander, Mr. Ansari traveled to Mumbai in the autumn of 2007 to begin doing
reconnaissance for an attack, officials said. Later, they said, he took part
in a Dec. 31 attack on a police headquarters in Rampur, 100 miles northwest
of Delhi, in which seven policemen were killed.
By that time, he was part of a team of Lashkar
militants: three from the Indian city of Lucknow; one from Bihar, in northern
India; and the two Pakistanis, officials said.
The leader was an Indian Muslim named Saba'uddin
Ahmed, a well-educated young man from an affluent family in Bihar. He was
the one who had been given four months of training by an ISI operative, in
addition to an earlier round of training in Lashkar camps, according to police
documents.
Mr. Ahmed had also been involved in at least
one prior mission, documents say: an attack on the Indian Institute of Science
in Bangalore in 2005 in which a scientist was killed.
After the attack on the police headquarters
in Rampur, "we were told to go to Mumbai to do the suicide operation,"
Mr. Ansari told the police, according to a charge sheet drawn up after his
arrest.
Speaking in Mumbai on Friday, India's new
home minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, admitted that there had been "lapses"
in the way India handled the crisis and said his government was trying to
"improve the effectiveness of the security systems."
Anger over last week's attacks has been directed
not only at neighboring Pakistan but also squarely at India's own government
for not having done more to prevent the attacks. In the most public outrage
so far, tens of thousands have marched in Mumbai and other cities across the
country.
"The people of India feel a sense of
hurt and anger as never before," the prime minister, Manmohan Singh,
said in New Delhi.
- Somini Sengupta contributed reporting from
Mumbai, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Jeremy Kahn also contributed reporting.
