Simply Another Blog: Suspects in Mumbai Bombings Confess Ties to Pakistani Militants

Suspects in Mumbai Bombings Confess Ties to Pakistani Militants
By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS and SOMINI SENGUPTA, July 28, 2006

MUMBAI, July 28 — Suspects in the serial bombings on July 11 of the city’s commuter train network have confessed they went to Pakistan for training in arms and explosives, the police in India said today, and at least one has testified that he received instructions from an operative of a banned terrorist organization operating across the border.

The statements by senior police officials represent the first glint of evidence of complicity by the Pakistani-based militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, that Indian officials have blamed repeatedly for terror attacks on Indian soil. The chief of the Mumbai police antiterrorist squad, K. P. Raghuvanshi, said today that six of the eight suspects confessed to having gone for military training in Pakistan.

The police have not described precisely how the 8 men are linked to each other or, more importantly, to the blasts, which killed 183 people during the evening rush hour.

The Pakistani Foreign Office spokeswoman, Tasnim Aslam, said by telephone from Islamabad that her government had offered to cooperate with the investigation into the bombings, but had yet to receive evidence from the government in New Delhi. “If they have something, they should share it with us and we will cooperate with them,” she offered, noting that Britain and the United States had turned to Pakistan to help track down terror suspects.

The Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Navtej Sarna, countered that no evidence offered to Pakistan in the past had yielded results.

To what extent today’s revelations will affect the bruised peace process between the two countries remains to be seen. Shortly after the July 11 blasts, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India accused Pakistan of failing to rein in terrorists operating on its soil. The Pakistani president, General Pervez Musharraf, called the accusation “unsubstantiated.”

The senior inspector of the Mumbai police, J. K. Hargude, who interviewed five of the eight suspects, described them as having possible links to Lashkar-e-Taiba. Among them is an apparently influential leader of Lashkar’s local chapter here, Faisal Shaikh, 30, and his younger brother, Muzamil, 23, a software engineer who, the police said, had recently begun to work with the American software company, Oracle.

Faisal Shaikh, the police said, appears to have organized the passage of the others to Pakistan for military training. Muzamil Shaikh, on the other hand, while keen to follow his brother into the radical Islamist group, seems to have had second thoughts after being offered the job at Oracle. He was employed on a contract basis, said a police officer who was part of the interrogations, pending the completion of company training. “He was very hopeful of a good career,” said the police officer, who was not authorized to speak to the news media. Both Muzamil and Faisal traveled to Pakistan through Iran, the police said.

The arrests of the two brothers on Thursday follows the capture of 6 others, including Zameer Shaikh, 31, a keymaker in central Mumbai; Sohail Shaikh, 30, from the nearby city of Pune; and Tanvir Ansari, 32, a doctor and practitioner of the alternative medicine known as Unani.

The police refused to saytoday how the men were connected to each other, or whether they had any direct links with the July 11 bombings.

Clearly, Faisal Sheikh has emerged as their biggest catch. Mr. Hargude said he joined the radical Students Islamic Movement of India by 2001, and resolved, as Mr. Hargude put it, to “do something for Islam.” He first traveled to Pakistan in 2002. He obtained a visa by saying he wanted to visit relatives in Lahore, but ended up meeting a number of extremists, including a Lashkar operative named Azam Cheema.

It was a fruitful exchange, as Mr. Hargude described it: Lashkar plied Mr. Shaikh with $750 to $900 a month through informal money transfer networks, while Mr. Shaikh sent potential Indian recruits for training. Mr. Hargude said all five men confessed to meeting Mr. Cheema between 2002 and 2005 at a training camp near the town of Bahawalpur.

Anand Giridharadas contributed reporting from the International Herald Tribune for this article.