"INTEL TEAM RETURNS HOME AFTER US SNUB" (D.C. Blocking Indian Hot Pursuit of Muslim Terrorists)

Intel team returns home after US snub CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA, TNN 11 November 2009, 01:16am IST WASHINGTON/NEW DELHI: In a show of miscommunication if not outright discord between Washington and New Delhi, an Indian intelligence team returned home on Tuesday after being denied access to question two Pakistani expatriates accused of plotting terrorist attacks in India.

The Indian team had rushed to the US after the FBI last month apprehended Dave Headley alias Daood Gilani and Rana Tawassur in hopes of questioning them about their links to Pakistani terrorist organizations outlined in the FBI affidavit, and the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. But after cooling their heels in Washington DC for nearly a week while US authorities processed their request, the Indian side was told the two suspects could not be questioned by outside agencies under US laws. The team did not even go to Chicago, whether the two accused are in detention.

New Delhi is furious at the snub, but put on a smiley face, ascribing the setback to "procedural" and "bureaucratic" delays. While acknowledging that US authorities did share a "fair amount of information" on the case while the team was in Washington DC, sources said the US attitude contrasted sharply with the kind of cooperation India offered to the US investigators in the 26/11 Mumbai case.

The FBI was allowed to question Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor of the jihadi squad that killed 172 people, for nine hours last December. Subsequently, an FBI agent also testified in the trial court via videolink.

It appears that the Indian team was not accorded the same courtesies, attesting to a long history of spotty cooperation going back to the Mumbai bomb blasts of 1993. Asked why the Indian intel team was rushed to the US without first ascertaining if there will be full access, sources said events were moving very fast and New Delhi did not want to waste any time in getting people in place to get as much information as possible.

But Washington had legal issues in terms of proving access to the accused, something which the FBI liaison at the US Embassy in New Delhi does not appear to have foreseen. The FBI had not returned calls seeking the US version of the snafu at the time of writing and the Indian Embassy declined to comment on the matter.

There is also suspicion in the intelligence analysts' community that Washington is trying to protect its lines of cooperation with Islamabad at the expense of India, in the process obfuscating Pakistan's complicity in terrorism. In the FBI affidavit, US investigators have named Ilyas Kashmiri, one of the Pakistani contacts of the accused Headley and Rana, but left two other contacts unnamed, describing them merely as LeT Member A and Individual A. Suspicion in spook circles is Individual A belongs to the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI and the US is trying not to embarrass Pakistan, whose cooperation it needs to carry forward its war on al-Qaida, Taliban and allied extremists.

Such kid glove treatment of Pakistan at the expense of Indian blood has been criticized by two scholars in a recent paper. "Too often US officials have sought to downplay instances when Pakistan has failed to cooperate with US counterterrorism efforts in order to protect other channels of cooperation," Lisa Curtis and Ted Bromund of the Heritage Foundation said in a paper released Monday. "The US and the UK need to convince Pakistan that cases against terrorists who attack India should be treated no differently than cases against terrorists who act in other parts of the world."

Seeking "consistent policies toward Pakistan that hold the country's officials accountable for stopping all support to terrorists," their paper said "connections among al-Qaeda, the Kashmir-focused terrorist groups, and the Pakistani security establishment are troubling and pose a direct security threat to Britain, the US, and other Western democracies. The US and Britain should continue to pressure the Pakistan government to shut down Pakistan-based terrorist groups, such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, which increasingly threaten Pakistan's own stability."

"The US and the UK also need to address forthrightly Pakistani noncooperation against terrorist targets. Both Washington and London seek counterterrorism partnerships with Pakistan, but they need to be willing to tell their publics when efforts to cooperate with Pakistan fail," they said.

Gilani
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/pakistan/terroristoutfits/jamaat-ul-fuqra.htm
Jamaat ul-Fuqra
Formation
Jamaat ul-Fuqra (JF) or “community of the impoverished”, a terrorist outfit operating in Pakistan and North America, was formed by a Pakistani cleric, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, in New York in 1980, on his first visit to the US. Mubarak Gilani’s intention in forming the outfit was to ‘purify’ Islam through violence.

Ideology, Leadership and Structure
The JF, in its early phase, sought to counter what is perceived as excessive Western influence on Islam. It also concluded that violence was a significant aspect in its quest to purify Islam. In its ideological moorings, the Fuqra regards as enemies of Islam all those who do not follow the tenets of Islam as laid out in the Koran, including those Muslims who they consider as heretics as well as non-Muslims. One of Gilani’s works published by the Quranic Open University in the US and seized in a 1991-investigation instructed his cadres that their foremost duty was to wage Jehad against the ‘oppressors of Muslims’. Members of the group are described as Islamist extremists with much hatred toward their ‘enemies’.

The JF is loosely structured with certain elements working openly through social service organisations to recruit members, raise money, organise activities and carry out propaganda. Individuals selected to live on JF premises agree to abide by the law and discipline of the Jamaat ul-Fuqra. Investigations by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office in the 1980s indicated that the JF was composed of approximately 30 different ‘Jamaats’ or communities, more or less mobile in nature. Most of these ‘Jamaats’ are reportedly existent even today along with what investigators discerned to be several covert paramilitary training compounds, one of which had been located in a mountainous area near Buena Vista, Colorado prior to the Colorado prosecutions in the mid-1990s.

Within 10 years of its formation, Fuqra’s communes in the US attracted many Muslim converts-including some of those recruited in prisons. The JF is said to comprise of some 1,000 to 3,000 members in the US. Secrecy is the hallmark of the outfit and cadres are reportedly well versed in the use of aliases. The Fuqra’s structure is well concealed behind front outfits and consists of a network of safe houses and cells. Furthermore, the JF founder as well as cadres consistently maintain that it does not exist. JF members occasionally travel abroad for ‘paramilitary and survivalist training’ under Gilani’s supervision.

Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, who also calls himself the sixth Sultan Ul Faqr, is the chief of JF.

Jamaat ul-Fuqra is headquartered in Hancock, New York.

Areas of Activity and Influence
Although Gilani, the reclusive chief of Fuqra resides in Lahore, Pakistan, most JF cells are located in North America. Fuqra members have purchased isolated rural properties in North America to live as a community, practice their faith, and insulate themselves from Western culture. The group has set up and funded rural communes that the US authorities allege are linked to murder, bombings and other felonies throughout the US and Canada. Currently, there are half a dozen Fuqra residential compounds in rural hamlets across the US sheltering hundreds of cadres, some of who have reportedly trained in the use of weapons and explosives in Pakistan.

Muslims of the Americas, a tax-exempt group established in the US in 1980 by Gilani, operates communes of primarily black, American-born Muslims in many states in the US, including in Binghamton in New York, Badger in California, York in South Carolina and Red House in Virginia. JF is reportedly linked through court documents to the Muslims of Americas. There is also a road in the name of Sheikh Gilani in the vicinity of Virginia. The cult houses between 100 and 200 people, many of them women and children in about 20 huge trailers. There is also a Virginia newspaper, the Islamic Post, founded by Sheikh Gilani.

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