Pakistani jihadi organisations, which joined the International Islamic Front (IIF) formed by Osama Bin Laden in February 1998 either immediately on its formation or thereafter, have been active in India since 1993. The Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) is a founding member of the IIF and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-Al-Islami (HUJI) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) joined the IIF thereafter.
Al Qaeda itself, as an organisation, had not come to notice in the past for any presence or activities either in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) or other parts of India. However, in 1999, there were unconfirmed reports of Al Qaeda having cased one of the US Consulates in India for a possible terrorist strike. The ground work for this was alleged to have been done not from Pakistan, but from Bangladesh, possibly through the local branch of the HUJI, identified by the US as HUJI (B).
When Abu Zubaidah, then projected as the operational chief of Al Qaeda, was arrested at Faislabad in Pakistani Punjab in March 2002, sections of the Pakistani media had reported that he had done a training course in a computer training institute in Pune in India before crossing over into Pakistan and joining Al Qaeda. It is not known when he did this course, for how long he had stayed in India and who were his other contacts in India.
The report of the US National Commission, which had enquired into the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US, refers to a visit made by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM), the reported mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist strikes, to India, when he was operating from Karachi. According to the report, after bin Laden had shifted to Afghanistan from the Sudan in 1996, KSM had visited him there and thereafter travelled to India, Indonesia and Malaysia, where he met Hambali, reportedly the operational chief of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), who is now in US custody.
The Commission's report does not give any other details of KSM's visit to India in 1996. From a perusal of the report, it is evident that the USA's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had shared with the Commission only sanitised summaries of the interrogation reports of KSM and others, but not the full texts. It is, therefore, possible, that the full texts available with the US intelligence agencies might contain more details of KSM's visit to India. Was he merely transiting through India on his way to South-East Asia or did he come here to explore the possibility of establishing sleeper cells of Al Qaeda for possible future use?
There is another reference in the report, which has since come to have some relevance to India. The report says on Page150
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" At this point, late 1998 to early 1999, planning for the 9/11 operation began in earnest. Yet while the 9/11 project occupied the bulk of KSM's attention, he continued to consider other possibilities for terrorist attacks. For example, he sent Al Qaeda operative Issa al Britani to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to learn about the jihad in South-East Asia from Hambali. Thereafter, KSM claims, at bin Laden's direction in early 2001,he sent Britani to the US to case potential economic and Jewish targets in New York City.....KSM's proposals around the same time for attacks in Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and the Maldives were never executed, although Hambali's JI operatives did some casing of possible targets."
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The report does not give any details of Issa al Britani, who apparently knew both KSM and bin Laden and enjoyed their confidence to such an extent that he was entrusted with some of the preparatory work relating to future operations. What is the nationality of al-Britani? Where was he based when he was given these tasks by KSM, either at his own instance or at the instance of bin Laden? These questions have not been posed and answered in the report. It is apparent from the report that the US intelligence, which interrogated KSM, was not able to establish the identity and whereabouts of al-Britani. Had they been able to do so, they might have been able to arrest and question him regarding the trips for casing economic targets in New York, which he had undertaken for AlQaeda.
In the beginning of August,2004, the British intelligence rounded up 12 suspects, reportedly on a tip-off received from the Pakistani intelligence on the basis of their interrogation of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a young Pakistani computer expert, who has been projected as the communications expert of Al Qaeda, and who was arrested at Lahore on July12, 2004, and Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian national, who was wanted by the USA's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for prosecution in the case relating to the explosions outside the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August,1998 and who was arrested at Gujrat in Pakistani Punjab on July 25,2004.
Of these, eight have since been charged before the Old Bailey Criminal Court. The charges against them are given in the Annexure. Of these, one is stated to be a convert to Islam from a Hindu family which had migrated to the UK from Kenya in 1973 and the other seven are reported to be of Pakistani origin.
The Hindu convert to Islam is Dhiren Barot, 32, also known as (aka) Bilal aka Abu Musa al-Hindi aka Abu Eissa al-Hindi. He is reportedly the son of Manubhai Barot and BhartiyabenThe other suspects are Abdul Aziz Jalil, 31, Omar Abdur Rehman, 20, Zia Ul Haq, 25, Nadeem Tarmohamed, 26, Mohammed Naveed Bhatti, 24, Quaisir Shaffi, 25 and Junade Feroze, 28.
After his arrest and preliminary interrogation, Dhiren Barot, who reportedly embraced Islam in 1992, has been projected in some reports as a leading Al Qaeda operative of the UK and in some others as the head of Al Qaeda set-up in theUK. It has also been stated that Barot alias Bilal is none other than al-Britani mentioned by KSM during his interrogation. and that he had been visiting the tribal areas near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border as well as J&K .
He has been charged by the British authorities with the following offences:
- Conspiracy to murder.
- Conspiracy to commit a public nuisance by the use of radioactive materials, toxic gases, chemicals and or explosives.
- Possessing a reconnaissance plan of the Prudential Building in New Jersey.
- Possessing reconnaissance plans of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, the stock exchange and Citigroup, both in New York, and two notebooks with information on explosives,
U.S. counter terrorism officials have been quoted as claiming that Barot was the author of documents, written in fluent English, describing surveillance at U.S. financial buildings during 2000 and 2001, which were found on computers and in e-mails seized during the July raids in Pakistan. TheNew York Times has quoted an unnamed senior US official as saying that the British arrests were part of a global crackdown on Al Qaeda suspects who were "part of this web that emanates from Pakistan". Barot had reportedly travelled to the US with two others for casing economic targets, but the identities of the other two have not yet been established. It is said he was generally using South African and Sudanese passports for his travels
Pakistani officials have described Barot as "a veteran of the Islamic militant battle against Indian forces in Kashmir. "He also reportedly travelled inMarch, 2004, to a terrorist hideout near the Pakistan-Afghan border and met with other terrorist suspects. They have also said that Noor Khan, the so-called computer wizard, was in contact with persons in other countries of South Asia. Nepal has been mentioned as one of them.
The recent wave of arrests in Pakistan and the UK has unearthed one surrogate of Al Qaeda of Hindu origin and eight, including Noor Khan, of Pakistani origin. These are not the first South Asian surrogates of Al Qaeda to have come to notice. Pakistan has thousands of Al Qaeda surrogates, but those are members of the Pakistani jihadi organisations which have joined bin Laden's IIF. The new crop of Pakistani jihadi terrorists did not join any of these Pakistani organisations. They directly helped Al Qaeda instead of through the Pakistani jihadi organisations. While Noor Khan is a Pakistani, who used to visit the UK, the other seven seemed to have come from the community of Pakistani origin in the UK.
All those arrested in the UK, including Barot, seem to have been the terrorist contemporaries of Omar Sheikh, the principal accused in the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, who has been sentenced to death, but the hearing on his appeal has been repeatedly postponed under some pretext or the other. During his interrogation by the US authorities, KSM was reported to have admitted his principal role in the beheading of Pearl, but this does not find mention in the report of the 9/11 Commission.
Some Police officials of Karachi, who had interrogated Omar Sheikh in connection with the kidnapping of Pearl, allege that Barot and the other seven arrested and charged in the UK used to visit Pakistan in the past and, like Omar Sheikh, were known to the Pakistani intelligence officials with whom they were in regular touch. They also allege that Omar Sheikh had mentioned during his interrogation about the links ofBarot with bin Laden and KSM. According to them, while the Musharraf regime had shared with the US and the UK authorities whatever they, with US assistance, found in the computers of the persons arrested during the July raids in Pakistan, they have not shared with them what they already knew about these terrorists on the basis of their own interactions with them in the past and what Omar Sheikh had told them during the interrogation.
The reported visit of KSM to India in 1996 and the involvement of Barot with Al Qaeda should be of concern to India. Do they indicate the existence of sleeper/support cells of Al Qaeda in India, which have not so far come to the notice of the Indian intelligence? This needs detailed probe.
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B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow and Convenor, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter.
