Free Republic

Pakistan moves on Mumbai accused Hafiz Mohammad Saeed founded Lashkar-e-Taiba Pakistan has put the founder of an Islamic militant group accused of having links to the Mumbai attacks under house arrest.Cleric Hafiz Mohammad Saeed set up the group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which India says planned and carried out the attacks. Pakistan is also closing offices of Mr Saeed's Jamaat-ud-Dawa charity, after it was put on a UN blacklist. Pakistan has denied any involvement in the attacks, which killed at least 170 in Mumbai (Bombay) last month. Pakistan's Interior Ministry told the BBC that Jamaat-ud-Dawa buildings would be shut across the country immediately....

The obvious is sometimes the most difficult thing to discern, and few things are more amusing than the efforts of our journals of record to keep "open" minds about the self-evident, and thus to create mysteries when the real task of reportage is to dispel them. An all-time achiever in this category is Fernanda Santos of the New York Times, who managed to write from Bombay on Nov. 27 that the Chabad Jewish center in that city was "an unlikely target of the terrorist gunmen who unleashed a series of bloody coordinated attacks at locations in and around Mumbai's commercial...

Since the terrorist attacks in Mumbai 10 days ago, speculation has been rife about the birthplace of the lone surviving gunman, Ajmal Amir Kasab. India and Pakistan have clashed over reports that he came from the Punjab. Saeed Shah, after spending days travelling throughout the region, tracked down the killer's home - and his grandfather - and found conclusive proof of his identity. The little house was certainly that of a poor family, with a courtyard to one side and a small cart propped up in one corner. The old man and middle-aged woman who answered the door were not...

Kolkata, Dec 6 (IANS) The tremors of the terror attacks in Mumbai were felt across India, with live television coverage of the 60-hour carnage. The terrorists have been vanquished but the imprints that the horrific scenes left on people's minds have led to a sharp rise in cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, say psychiatrists. 'I got my first case on Nov 28, when security forces were still battling terrorists in Mumbai. Professional ethics don't allow me to name her so all I can say is she was having frequent panic attacks and was emotionally numb,' city-based psychiatrist...

WASHINGTON: Several attackers may have survived the three-day siege of Mumbai that killed 171 people last week, analysts said on Thursday. "I think there are more. My sources say (there were) at least 23 of the gunmen," said Farhana Ali, a former CIA and Rand Corp counterterrorism analyst and expert on militant networks. Ali, who most recently visited India and Pakistan last month before the attacks, said her information came from Pakistan, but declined to further identify the source. "If that's true, that makes one wonder why we haven't seen more attacks. Are they lying low?" she said "I think...

Tonight (Friday a.m. US time) Pakistan gave its official answer to India on the request to turn over to India ASAP Islamic terrorists based on Pakistan soil and operating out in the open. Our friend and good ally India has ramped up the pressure and now banned the entry of Pakistani nationals into it's country by land, sea or air.The massive terrorist attack in Mumbai had a strong element of not only India being targeted, but the United States as well. Our fellow Americans were sought out, and some were killed.All intelligence points to Pakistan as the base for these...

Saudi King Abdullah has been urging the United Nations to pass a universal law prescribing imprisonment for criticizing Islam.  Some skeptics, including myself (notwithstanding that I twice enjoyed the King's generous hospitality in Riyadh), have suggested he start instead by establishing religious liberty in his own country,  where all religious observance other than Wahabi Islam is banned.   Two events occurring last week -- the hideous carnage in Mumbai, accompanied by shameful  proceedings at the U.N. -- convinced me it is urgent for His Majesty to radically alter his plans. Since the U.N. actions were less publicized, let me begin there.  A key U.N. committee passed...

India has proof that the Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI was behind the deadly Mumbai attacks. Sources have told NDTV that ISI trained the attackers.The names of trainers and the places where meticulous training took place are also known to the government, the sources said. The United States is believed to have even more evidence some of which it has shared with India, they said. The US has told Pakistan that they have proof of terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba's role and sought the arrest of its chief Hafeez Sayeed. Sources added it is hard to imagine that Pakistan army was not aware...

India's has accused "elements inside Pakistan" of orchestrating the late November terrorist attacks on high-profile targets in Mumbai. While such accusations often follow attacks inside India, the scale of these attacks put them in a new category. Daniel Markey, a CFR Senior Fellow, was until last year a South Asia expert on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff. He says India's accusations may be based on hard evidence, but cautions that Pakistan's government may be unable to control the "Frankenstein's monster" it created when it helped train terrorists to infiltrate and fight against Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region....

Details emerge on CIA terror plot warnings Praveen Swami MUMBAI: Indian intelligence sources have confirmed to The Hindu that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) delivered two warnings of an impending terror attack on Mumbai in September. The first one was delivered through the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) on September 18. The sources said the information was of general nature, suggesting that the Lashkar-e-Taiba was planning to attack Mumbai. The sources said that on September 24, the CIA provided further details in response to a request from the RAW. In this second warning, the U.S. agency expressly stated that the...

There's a nagging question about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India: Why doesn't this happen more often? It was a relatively low-tech operation - as few as 10 men armed only with guns and grenades - aimed at soft targets - two hotels, a train station and a Jewish center - that produced spectacularly bloody results: nearly 200 killed, more than 300 wounded and dozens of hostages over three days last week. This was indeed terrorism, but at its most basic level it was mass murder, similar to a shooting spree at a school, restaurant or post office. However, instead...

WASHINGTON: The United States has set the stage for punitive internationally-backed strikes by India against terrorist camps in Pakistan if Islamabad does not act first to dismantle them by rejecting President Zardari’s alibi that non-state actors were responsible for the last week’s carnage in Mumbai. The game-changer, outlined by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, among others, robs Islamabad of the fig leaf that Zardari used in his interview on Larry King Live that ''stateless actors'' are holding the whole world hostage and Pakistan was not to blame. Rice said in effect that the excuse does not absolve Pakistan responsibility for...

Banning guns is in the news. India practically bans guns, but that didn’t stop the horrific Muslim terrorist attacks this last week. A football player concerned for his safety violates New York City’s tough gun control regulations by carrying a concealed handgun, and people call for everything from banning NFL players from carrying guns to demanding that the athlete serve many years in jail. Where is the sympathy or debate in either case over letting people defend themselves? Given that the terrorists smuggled their machine guns in with them, would anyone argue that India’s extremely strict gun licensing and artificially...

A senior police official said that, in all, the names and numbers of five members of the Pakistani group's leadership were contained in a satellite phone left behind by the terrorists on a fishing vessel they hijacked then abandoned before reaching Mumbai. Records from the phone show calls had been made from it to these five men. Among them: Yusuf Muzammil, head of Lashkar-e-Taiba's terrorism operations against India. The senior Indian police official said he was identified as the mastermind of the attacks by the only terrorist captured alive, Ajmal Kasab, or Qasab. The police official said two of Mr....

The White House Washington December 1, 2008 Laura and I send our condolences to the Chabad-Lubavitch family and all those honoring the lives lost in this tragedy. The compassionate individuals of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement dedicate their lives to sharing G-d’s teachings with people throughout the world, offering strength, hope and guidance in the unique spirit of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of blessed memory. Through countless acts of love and kindness, the lost members of the Chabad-Lubavitch community in Mumbai represented the best of the human spirit, and their memories will live on in the hearts and souls...

‘Kill Hell Boy’ From NICK PARKER Chief Foreign Correspondentin Mumbai Published: 01 Dec 2008 A FRENZIED lynch mob tried to kill sole surviving Mumbai terrorist Azam Kasav, dramatic new video footage revealed yesterday. Baby-faced Kasav, 21, was caught with another gunman after a Skoda they had hijacked was halted at a road block. Armed cops opened up on the car, killing Kasav’s comrade instantly. A passer-by captured the unfolding scene on video using his mobile. It shows cops suddenly realising blood-spattered Kasav – with a bullet-wound to his hand – had been playing dead. He is seen crouching in a...

Around the world, people have reacted with horror to the vile atrocities in Mumbai. For three days, our TV screens transmitted images of carnage and chaos ... Despite the fact that Western citizens were caught up in the attacks, there is nevertheless a sense that this was nothing to do with us — a horrible event happening in a faraway place. Among commentators, moreover, there has been no small amount of confusion. Were these terrorists motivated by the grievance between Muslims and Hindus over Kashmir, or was this a broader attack by Al Qaeda? If British and American tourists were...

MUMBAI, India (AP) - The only gunman captured after a 60-hour terrorist siege of Mumbai said he belonged to a Pakistani militant group with links to the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, a senior police officer said Sunday. The gunman was one of 10 who paralyzed the city in an attack that killed at least 174 people and revealed the weakness of India's security apparatus. India's top law enforcement official resigned, bowing to growing criticism that the attackers appeared better trained, better coordinated and better armed than police. The announcement blaming militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, threatened to escalate tensions between India...

At least five terrorist gunmen have evaded capture in Mumbai and could make a secondary strike on India's financial capital, it was feared this morning. Indian security forces are officially claiming that just ten militants – nine of whom were killed and one caught alive – were behind a co-ordinated terror attack that claimed nearly 200 lives. However, the hijacked Indian fishing boat used by the gunmen to approach Mumbai, the crew of which were also slaughtered, had equipment for 15 men on board when it was discovered adrift off the city shore – suggesting that several gunmen could still...

I hope I am not alone in finding the statements about Bombay from our politicians to be anemic and insipid, and the media coverage of the disastrous and criminal attack too parochially focused on the fate of visiting or resident Americans. [snip] Not to romanticize it overmuch, it is a huge and officially secular federal democracy that is based, like the United States, on ethnic and confessional pluralism. Its political and economic and literary echelons speak English better than most of us do. [snip] It would be good to hear from the president and the president-elect that we regard attacks...