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Mafia don and global terrorist Dawood Ibrahim closely working with Jihadists: US Sleuths
By M Rama Rao - Reporting for Asian Tribune from New Delhi

New Delhi, 29 November :(Asiantribune.com): Wanted Mafia don, Dawood Ibrahim, hiding in Pakistan with the help of ISI for over 12-years, is closely working with the Al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba and other Jihadists, American sleuths believe. And say, he has become one of the world's most wanted terrorists.

He has allegedly made a deal to share his smuggling routes with Al-Qaeda operatives. But with Washington pressing for his capture, Dawood may have outlived his usefulness to the ISI, the American weekly, US News and World Report, says in its latest issue.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration is looking at his ties to the heroin trade; the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is tracing his assets and ties to terrorist groups through a top Pakistani CD counterfeiter.

5,000 member strong army of contract killers, smugglers, and extortionists at the command of Dawood spans 14 countries and has become a conduit for terrorist funding and arming as 'terrorist groups, faced relentless onslaught of official agencies, are transforming their cells into crime syndicates', the US News report says in its exclusive cover story.

This new tactic has foxed the counter-terrorism official, the report says while throwing light on the "New Business of Terror". What many intelligence analysts do see today, however, is terrorist organizations' stealing whole chapters out of the criminal playbook--trafficking in narcotics, counterfeit goods, illegal aliens--and in the process converting their terrorist cells into criminal gangs.

In years past, many terrorist groups would have steered away from criminal activity, worried that such tactics might tarnish their image. But for hard-pressed jihadists, committing crimes against non-believers is increasingly seen as acceptable.

Detailing Dawood's role in the 1983 riots in Mumbai and his subsequent escape to Pakistan, the US News Report says, after the riots, "ISI made Dawood an offer": If he relocated to Karachi and kept working with the ISI, it would guarantee him control of India's coastal smuggling routes.

The authors of the story describe what happened in Bombay on March 12, 1993 - 10 bombs packed with plastic explosives killed 257 and injured over 700 – as a chilling precursor to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a careful choreography of death and destruction, aimed at the heart of India's financial centre and intended to maximize civilian casualties.

Dawood is believed to own shopping malls, luxury homes, and shipping and trucking lines in Pakistan that smuggle arms into India and heroin into Europe, according to the US magazine.

-Asian Tribune -
http://www.asiantribune.com/show_news.php?id=16282