ISI Mark

The Mumbai Police need to be complimented for their painstaking investigationinto the seven co-ordinated explosions on July 11, 2006, in which over 180suburban train commuters were killed.

At a press conference in Mumbai on September 30, 2006, came the disclosurethat the blasts were carried out by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) of Pakistan at theinstance of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) with joint teams ofIndian and Pakistani members of the LET, with the Indian members having beenrecruited with the help of the Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Allthe LET members, who participated in the blasts, were trained in a LET trainingcamp at Bahawalpur, which is in the heart of the Seraiki area of SouthernPunjab.

Bahawalpur, which is the home-town of Maulana Masood Azhar, the Amir of theJaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), has generally been known as the stronghold of the JEM,but the LET too has a training camp there, which is run by Azam Cheema, aPakistani national. Azam Cheema alias Babu, who is No.3 in the LET of Pakistanand reportedly co-ordinates its operations in India, is Professor of Islamiat ata degree college of Faislabad in Pakistani Punjab. Abu Zubaidah, the No.3 in AlQaeda, was arrested by the Pakistani authorities in March,2002, in the house ofan LET operative in Faislabad. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had cometo know of his having been given shelter by the LET in Faislabad. The ISIarrested him, at the prodding of the CIA, and he was flown out of Pakistan bythe Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for interrogation. At that time, therewere reports that Azam Cheema had brought Abu Zubaidah to Faislabad after he hadescaped from Afghanistan and organised shelter for him there. Despite this, hewas not arrested by the Pakistani authorities and Cheema continued toco-ordinate the operations of the LET in India.

The presence of an LET training camp in Bahawalpur came to notice during theinterrogation of two LET operatives—Feroz Abdul Latif Ghaswala alias Abdullahand Mohammad Chippa alias Ubedullah—arrested by the Delhi police in May, 2006.Their interrogation also brought out that they were taken to Teheran via Dhakawith valid visas and immigration stamps on their passports and thenclandestinely taken by road from Teheran into Balochistan and then to Bahawalpurfor the training. They returned to India after the training by the same route.

It would appear that the Indian members of the LET, who had participated inthe Mumbai blasts of July 11, 2006, had also travelled to Bahawalpur via Teheranfor training with valid Iranian visas and immigration stamps, but with noentries regarding their further travel from Teheran to Bahawalpur viaBalochistan.

This would indicate that as compared to its involvement in the blasts ofMarch, 1993, the ISI had taken greater care this time to maintain thedeniability of its involvement. In respect of the blasts of March,1993, therewas a continuous chain of evidence of the involvement of the ISI in the blastsas follows:

• Travel of the perpetrators by air from Mumbai to Dubai with entries in their passports and in the passenger manifests of the plane.
• Travel from Dubai to Karachi by a flight of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) in their real names and not under assumed names. Their real names figured in the PIA's passenger manifests. However, their passports did not carry any Pakistani visa or immigration stamp. The ISI took them from Dubai to Karachi with plain paper visas, which were withdrawn from them on their return to Dubai from Karachi after the training.
• Issue to the perpetrators of explosives, chemical timers and hand-grenades from the stocks of the Pakistan Army. While it would be difficult to prove the origin of explosives, the timers were proved to have been from stocks supplied by the US to Pakistan in the 1980s for use in Afghanistan and the grenades were proved to have been manufactured in a Pakistan Government ordnance factory.

The new route via Teheran obviates the need for air travel from Teheran toPakistan. Thus, it would be difficult for the investigating officers to collectdocumentary evidence of their onward journey from Teheran to Pakistan and theirreturn journey by the same route. To maintain the deniability of itsinvolvement, the ISI would also seem to have taken the additional precautionthis time of not giving them any material other than RDX explosives. It would bedifficult to prove that the explosives were from Pakistani government stocks.The perpetrators reportedly used locally-procured mechanical timers (clocks).

From the evidence given out by the Mumbai Police at their press conference,it was amply clear that the LET carried out the blasts with the help of a groupof Indian and Pakistani Muslims and that the operation was planned and co-ordinatedfrom the LET's camp in Bahawalpur. The perpetrators were trained there.

It is interesting to recall that the three British citizens of Pakistaniorigin, who carried out the London blasts of July, 2005, were also reported tohave visited Bahawalpur and that Rashid Rauf, a Mirpuri absconder wanted in amurder case of Birmingham, who was reported by the Pakistani authorities to haveacted as a cut-out with an Afghanistan-based Al Qaeda leader in planning theoperation to blow up some US-bound planes in August, was arrested in Bahawalpur,where he had been living for three years in a house bought by him. He hadmarried a woman related to Maulana Masood Azhar.

The Mumbai Police naturally did not share with the media the details of theevidence regarding the ISI involvement collected by them. Some of the evidencemust have come from the interrogation of the 15 persons arrested by the MumbaiPolice, including a Pakistani national, of whom the Mumbai Police claim to havedirect evidence against 12. The arrested included four of the Indian Muslims whohad actually planted the improvised explosive devices in the trains. Of theactual perpetrators, three Indian Muslims and six Pakistanis are reported to beabsconding.

This would be a fit case for testing out the sincerity of Pakistan to carryout its recently-expressed (at Havana) commitment to co-operate with India inthe investigation of terrorism-related cases. If it is really sincere, it shouldhand over to India Azam Cheema and the absconding Pakistanis for interrogationand prosecution. If it follows its past practice of avoiding action against themunder some pretext or the other, that would be a clear indication that itscommitment was yet another eye-wash.

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India,New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.