Police expect Mumbai-style terror attack on city of London after an increase in ‘intelligence chatter.’
Latest Updates: Mumbai attacks RSS
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johnpi
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johnpi
The US government has charged the first US citizen in the Mumbai terror attacks. He is Lashkar-e-Taiba operative David Headley, formerly Daood Gilani.
Headley reportedly provided surveillance before the attack, and also took boat trips in Mumbai harbor, from where the attacks were launched.
The foreign media, especially Indian, has it all over the US press with reportage on this story. Here’s a few video pieces from a Delhi news service. Pardon the circus-like sensationalism, but these reports have the most information I’ve seen yet about Headley’s background (this video), and his ties to extremists including Ilyas Kashmiri (this video). The second video also reports the names of the operatives as-yet-unnamed-by-the-FBI-or-the-US-press that were also involved with Headley.
One person, identified by the FBI as Lashkar-e-Taiba’s director of transnational operations is Sajid Mir, a former Pakistani army officer and ISI agent. Mir is reported to have recruited French white convert Willy Brigitte to carry out a terror attack in Australia.
The second person named is Lashakr-e-Taiba’s ’section head’ for Bangladesh, Sheikh Saeed.
U.S. prosecutors also unsealed charges against a retired major in the Pakistani military, Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, for participating in the conspiracy to attack the Danish newspaper and its employees.
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aziz
Zeba Iqbal has some recollections about the Mumbai terror attacks, and thoughts on how India has responded as a nation. The comparison between 26/11 and 9/11 is not a flattering one for America.
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aziz
and on a more somber note, today is the anniversary of the Mumbai terrorist attacks. Vandana Sood at Beliefnet has some recollections about that tragic day.
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johnpi
There’s been a lot of developments in the story of the two Pakistani American men from Chicago who were arrested by the FBI for plotting to attack the Copenhagen newspaper that published the Mohammed cartoons.
One of the men, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, is being described as more of an enabler for the other – David Coleman Headley – formerly Daood Gilani.
Both men are now being described as operatives of Lashkar-e-Toiba/Lashkar-e-Taiba who have made a number of trips to India and where investigators say they suspect Headley may have helped with scouting and planning last year’s Mumbai massacre.
Indian papers report that Headley’s chief patron is a former elite Pakistani commando turned Caliphate-aspirant militant named Ilyas Kashmiri who established a group called the 313 Brigade – mentioned in conversations by the Mumbai attackers. An article in an Indian paper reports that Headley was so despondent a few months ago when it was reported that Kashmiri was killed in a drone attack that all his activity ground to a halt – but became active again when he got a message that Kashmiri was alive.
The Indians are also reporting:
“We have established that Headley and Tahawwur were in touch with the same Pakistani-based ‘handlers’ who gave directions to the 10 terrorists who attacked Mumbai on 26/11. We are now investigating how he had corresponded with Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and Zarar Shah (presently in Pakistan’s custody) and other masterminds who carried out the audacious Mumbai attacks,” said an investigating officer.
Indian investigators are now looking for a woman Headley met with frequently on his trips to India and who they say may have been involved in setting up safehouses for militants in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
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johnpi
Tonight at 8 pm, HBO will show a documentary called ‘Terror in Mumbai.’ The first anniversary of the Mumbai massacre will be next week.
…with the Mumbai attacks [filmmaker Dan] Reed has an incredible arsenal of footage and recordings at his disposal — including hours of phone calls made between the young men committing the attacks and their older leaders, including spokesman “Brother Wasi”, in Pakistan.
These phone calls, intercepted by Mumbai police who had fed traceable sim cards to known terrorist organizations, are the fascinating centerpiece of the film Notably, the killers, young men from Pakistani villages, frequently show incredible naivety. “There are computers here with 30 inch screens!” exclaims one mass-murderer on the phone to his irritated boss whilst in Mumbai’s iconic Taj Mahal Hotel. He goes on, “It’s amazing — the windows are huge! It’s got two kitchens, a bath and a little shop.” Brother Wasi, sounding exasperated, orders them to set the building on fire (they comply).
The callous nature of their leaders is also exposed. “There’s no harm in throwing a few grenades,” says Brother Wasi at one point. At other points he is coldly urging the scared young men into suicidal situations, ignoring the fear in their trembling voices.
The killers themselves cut tragic, almost sympathetic figures. We see the one surviving terrorism handcuffed to a bed and bleeding; he claims he was “sold” into terrorism by his family.
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johnpi
The first anniversary of the Mumbai terror attacks is rolling around. The attacks began on November 26th. Expect a slew of retrospectives, many of which will probably have something to say about Muslims and Islamic extremism. Here’s one from the Asia Times, which calls the attackers “Pakistan-trained gunmen” a construct that seems to imply the Pakistani government had something to do with the attack, as some hotheads in India claimed. The international consensus is that it did not.
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johnpi
Pakistan arrests a founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, group accused of masterminding the Mumbai assault.
The leader of a banned Islamist group that India has accused of carrying out attacks on its financial capital late last year was placed under house arrest again on Monday.
Pakistani police prevented Hafiz Muhammad Saeed from leaving his home for Eid-al-Fitr celebrations marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Saeed is a founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba — the militant group New Delhi claims masterminded the commando-style assault that killed 166 people in Mumbai last November.
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thabet
Part of the confession by the only individual caught after the Mumbai terrorist attack last year has been subjected to a court ban:
(Via FaithWorld.)
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johnpi
Apparently Pakistan is going to produce a report pointing the finger at Bangladesh for the Mumbai attacks. Is this what you call politics as usual in South Asia?
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thabet
Faisal Devji on the Mumbai terrorist attacks:
Whatever its larger aims, in other words, the terrorism that revealed itself in Mumbai represents Al-Qaeda’s displacement from the cutting edge of militancy. Indeed the world’s most celebrated terror network appears to have been swallowed whole and fully digested by the Pakistani outfits that protect its leaders, which is the same thing as saying that the global has disappeared into the local to animate it from within. Having fitted itself into a long history of militancy in the region, these attacks were quickly bogged down in purely local concerns, however global their aims may have been. And indeed if it is the Lashkar-e Taiba that was behind the terrorism in Mumbai, then this entrapment by history is even more pronounced, since what the group says it wants is neither any military or political advantage for Pakistan, nor a global Islamic caliphate, but rather some version of the British Raj-given that its ideologues imagine a South Asia pockmarked with “Hindu” and “Muslim” countries that largely coincide with the princely states of colonial times. Bizarrely pluralistic in conception, and much like some British plans for the subcontinent, this vision of India’s future represents a profound failure of the militant imagination, one that in fact possesses no future of its own.
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thabet
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aziz
If you are in New York City on Saturday, there’s a vigil for the victims of the Mumbai attacks by a Pakistani activist group you might want to check out.
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aziz
I have my say about Mumbai and India’s 9-11 – in a nutshell, muslim-Americans and muslim-Indians have much in common, as double-victims by virtue of their love for their country and their devotion to their faith.
Though I admit to being very puzzled by the wierd Modi-messianism in the comments thread… wtf?
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abunoor
According to this BBC story , something called the Indian Muslim Council is stating that the perpetrators of the Mumbai terrorist attacks should not be buried in a Muslim cemetary in India and are threatening to resist if the government tries to have them buried in a Muslim cemetary. I don’t know this group, but it seems to be a political one, and while Indian Muslim community leaders can issue whatever statements they deem appropriate, I would hope that such an issue would be decided by Indian Muslim scholars. Other reports available on the web characterize the Indian Muslim council statements differently than this BBC report does and rather than being about not having the perpetrators buried in a Muslim cemetary, quote statements that they cannot be allowed to be buried anywhere in “sacred Mother India,” neither in “Indian lands or Indian waters.”
People may remember quite a bit of discussion in the Muslim blogosphere, including on Brother Tariq’s blog earlier this year about the janaza prayer for a Muslim in Philadelphia who was killed after robbing a bank, a crime during which a police officer was killed.
Again, this is something for Indian Muslim scholars to determine and I understand the desire to show Muslim condemnation for terrorism, but I’m quite uncomfortable with the way these particular reports are characterizing the issue. Is it impossible to just bury the individuals without a public funeral and without making a public issue out of their burial? Perhaps it is…
Allaah knows best.
UPDATE: This story reports a meeting of Muslim scholars who seem to be agree that the perpetrators should not be buried in India, although only one scholar is named. Reading between the lines it seems they would have the perpetrators buried in Pakistan…again I understand the desire to show condemnation of their actions in the strongest possible terms, but that doesn’t seem better to me than a quiet quick private burial — and I’m a “Wahhabi” so I’m for no raised grave marker or anything. I don’t like creating a controversy about this because while I have no sympathy for anyone who would argue that what they did was right, I do have sympathy for those who think that people should be buried without some kind of questioning of whether they “deserve” to be buried or not…when humans die they are buried, when Muslims die, it is the obligation of the ummah as a whole to bury them, this does not constitute an endorsement of them or their actions.
