The Pakistani terrorist arrested in a major breakthrough in the suicide strike that killed five Central Reserve Police Force men was a Lashkar-e-Tayiba recruit and it was he who allegedly dropped the two 'fidayeens' on the outskirts of the city on the day of the attack, investigations show.
Two sisters were shot dead by suspected Lashkar-e-Tayiba militants in north Kashmir's Sopore town on Monday evening.A senior police officer said the two sisters, Kulsooma, 19 and Yasmin, 17 had been forced out of their home at gunpoint by some unidentified gunmen."The two sisters were later shot at point blank range and their bodies were recovered some distance away from their home," the officer said.The incident triggered panic in the area.
The attack on an Indian Army patrol in January, in which one soldier was beheaded, was carried out by Special Services Group of Pakistan Army, Defence Minister A K Antony told the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.
India's protests to Pakistan about prosecuting Lashkar-e-Tayiba founder Mohammad Saeed are pointless, sources in the Intelligence Bureau, India's domestic intelligence agency, told this reporter on Tuesday.
"There has been increasing international pressure on Pakistan to break off this intimate relationship between the ISI and LeT, but it has thus far come to naught," Ashley Tellis, who is senior associate, South Asia Programme with the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, said in his latest policy outlook The Menace That Is Lashkar-e-Tayiba.
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has promised that Islamabad would take action against alleged Mumbai attack mastermind and Lashkar-e-Tayiba chief Hafeez Saeed.
Pakistan responded to India's accusation that groups like Lashkar-e-Tayiba are planning attacks from across the border by saying that New Delhi should share actionable information to prevent such incidents.
NIA sources told rediff.com that Headley is wanted for larger crimes in India and the concept of dual sovereignty is being quoted in the latest bid to extradite or at least question him once again.
Pakistan-based groups like Lashker-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed persist in their attempts to launch terror attacks in India posing a "grave" challenge, Home Minister P Chidambaram warned Indian police officials on Monday.
Pakistani authorities have decided to hold the trial of five Lashkar-e-Tayiba operatives arrested in connection with the 2008 Mumbai attacks in a high-security jail in Rawalpindi, after learning that the outlawed group had made preparations to snatch the arrested men while they were being taken from prison to court.
One more suspected Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative has been arrested from Jharkhand by the Delhi police, taking the number of terrorists picked up in the last two days to three. Taufeek Ahmed Peer, 20, cousin of Ehtesham, who was arrested in Delhi on Wednesday, was picked up by the police from Hazaribagh in Jharkhand, sources said. They said no explosives were found on Peer and he is being brought to Delhi.
Describing Faheem Ansari and Sabauddin Ahmed as "co-conspirators" in the 26/11 attacks, Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam on Wednesday told the Bombay high court that the trial court had erred in acquitting the duo by giving them the benefit of doubt.
Chilling confessions of Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Coleman during his 30-hour interrogation with the National Investigation Agency last year reveal that the 26/11 attack is not the worse the nation has experienced. In fact, the terror strike that massacred Mumbai has only inspired the terror group to continue waging "war" against India.
Pakistani authorities have arrested another suspect in the Mumbai terror attacks case, as the anti-terror court conducting the trial of the five accused Lashkar-e-Tayiba operatives on Saturday adjourned the hearing till September 5. Sources said a newly-arrested suspect, identified only as Yunus, was produced in the court today by the Federal Investigation Agency, which is probing the Mumbai attacks. The judge remanded Yunus to police custody for 10 days.
A team of the National Investigating Agency had interrogated Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Headley for nearly 30 hours in the presence of his lawyer and investigators of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. During the interrogation, Headley, who is currently serving a jail term in the United States under a plea bargain, offered some chilling insights into the workings of the terror outfit.
Indigenous extremist outfits like Indian Mujahideen and the Student Islamic Movement of India could help Pak terror groups in retaliatory terror strikes in India in the wake of Afzal Guru's hanging, says Col R Hariharan, in an updated summary of comments made by him in a TV discussion
Ahead of the New Year, the Home Ministry has sounded a country-wide terror alert, especially for Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Goa and Bengaluru, after getting intelligence inputs that Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Tayiba was planning to strike.
In a show of strength in the Pakistani capital, several banned anti-India militant groups, including the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, on Wednesday vowed to take "revenge" for the execution of Afzal Guru and step up their "Jihad" in Jammu and Kashmir.
Police were taking utmost precautions and massive deployment of police has been made at all sensitive locations, worship places and crowded places to ensure safety of the citizens.
"As far as the Indian suggestion is concerned, that will be dealt with according to our own laws and we will respond to India in due course," Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit told reporters.
Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi had told United States ambassador Timothy Roemer that the growth of 'radicalised Hindu groups', which create religious tensions in India, could pose a bigger threat to the country than activities of groups like Lashkar-e-Tayiba.
Coming under attack after his reported statement that 'radicalised Hindu groups' posed a bigger threat than outfits like Lashkar-e-Tayiba, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday diluted his comments by saying that terrorism and communalism of all types are a threat to India. "Rahul Gandhi's view is that terrorism and communalism of all types are a threat to India. We need to remain vigilant against acts of terrorism of all kinds no matter who commits them," said Congress.
Jamaat ud-Dawa chief and Lashkar-e-Tayiba founder Hafiz Mohammed Saeed cannot be prosecuted for involvement in the Mumbai terror attacks without 'concrete evidence' against him, Pakistan's top law official said on Wednesday. "The government has the evidence provided by the United Nations Security Council that can only keep Saeed behind bars for a certain period of time under the Maintenance of Public Order law," said Attorney General Latif Khosa.
Pakistan investigation agencies have, for the very first time, revealed that they have adequate proof that the banned Lashkar-e-Tayiba is directly involved in the terror attack on Mumbai last year."The investigation has established beyond any reasonable doubt that the defunct LeT activists conspired, abetted, planned, financed and established communication network to carry out terror attacks in Mumbai," a Federal Investigation Agency report states.
The fierce encounter in north Kashmir's Sopore town ended late on Wednesday after security forces gunned down the lone holed up Lashkar-e -Tayiba militant.
The annual military operations budget of terror outfit Lashkar-e-Tayiba is a whopping $5.2 million, according to a secret United States document, which gives details about the outfit's fund raising activities, some of which comes through Jamaat-ud-Dawah's charitable networks.
The lawyer of Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Rana, co-accused with Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Headley in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, on Monday informed a federal court in Chicago that he was preparing for his client's February trial.
Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam handed over a sealed envelope to Judge M L Tahiliani during the ongoing trial into the Mumbai terror attacks. He sought the judge's permission to keep the identities of six FBI agents, who are likely to depose during the trial, a secret.
Aspiring actor and fitness trainer Rahul Bhatt, whose proximity to 26/11 conspirator David Headley brought him under the scanner of anti-terror agencies, feels the 35-year prison term for the Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative is 'inappropriate' and wants him to be tried in India and 'rot' in jail.
The United States has said it will continue to bring to justice the other six people named in Mumbai terror attacks case, including Lashkar-e-Tayiba leaders.
There has been a huge cover-up of the LeT iceberg in India that helped David Headley and Tahawwur Rana plan the 26/11 terror strike, says B Raman
Pakistani authorities have made no progress in tracking down 20 suspects, including Karachi-based Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative Muhammad Amjad Khan, who were named in a chargesheet filed in an anti-terrorism court a year ago for playing a key role in facilitating the Mumbai attacks.
The government of Pakistan's Punjab province has decided to disassociate itself from the case against Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief and Lashkar-e-Tayiba founder Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the suspected mastermind behind the terror attack on Mumbai, and filed a plea for its withdrawal.On Monday, the provincial government informed Pakistan's Supreme Court that it has challenged the release of Saeed due to certain 'confidential evidence' against him.
United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in concert with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday amended the foreign terrorist organisation designation of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayiba in order to include one of the terror group's front organisation and a charitable arm of it as part of the FTO designation too.
The 26-page lawsuit accusing the ISI of aiding and abetting the LeT in the slaughter of 166 people was filed before a New York Court on November 19, following which the Brooklyn court issued summons to Major Samir Ali, Azam Cheema, Ahmed Shuja Pasha, Nadeem Taj and Major Iqbal of the Inter-Services Intelligence of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and and Hafiz Saeed of the Jammat ud Dawaa.
Relatives of a Rabbi, who was gunned down along with his pregnant wife during the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008, have filed a wrongful death suit against Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and Lashkar-e-Tayiba at a Brooklyn court. Rabbi Gavriel Noah Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, who were originally from Brooklyn, were killed when the attackers took over the Chabad Lubavitch centre at Nariman House in November 2008. They were slaughtered in front of their two-year-old son.
According to a report in the Terrorism Monitor, a periodical published by the Virginia based Jamestown Foundation, intelligence authorities have revealed that LeT's marine wing is planning a repeat of the 26/11 Mumbai attack, and is on the look out for an incursion into India via the western coast.
Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab and his companions were instructed by their Lashkar-e-Tayiba handlers on telephone to hold as many hostages as possible during the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks to demand from the Indian government the creation of a "separate state for Muslims".
Although three years have gone by since the National Investigation Agency was formed, the report card for India's premier agency probing cases of terror does not look all that good. But the bigger question that we must ask is whether the agency has been allowed to function in a manner that it ought to have, reports Vicky Nanjappa.
When Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs was challenged as to what action against terror groups, including the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, the US had been able to elicit from Pakistan and that President Obama's statements that Pakistan providing safe havens to these groups being unacceptable was said in India to pacify Indians, he defended the actions taken by Islamabad thus far.
