Pak finds Bangladeshi link to 26/11 terror

Your Ad Here

Islamabad: Pakistan has revealed a Bangladeshi connection to the Mumbai terror attacks, saying it has evidence of not only the involvement of a banned militant organisation, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami, Bangladesh (HuJI-B), but also of its role in planning the attack and training the terrorists.

A reference in this regard is likely to be made in the report of the country's premier investigation agency, FIA, that will be shared soon with India as findings of preliminary investigations, local English newspaper Dawn reported on Thursday.

The report would most likely be indicating that the Mumbai attack was the handiwork of an 'international network of Muslim fundamentalists' present in South Asia and spread all the way to West Asia, and might build the case for regional anti-terror cooperation.

Although the contents of the report have been kept a tightly-guarded secret by the the Interior Ministry, sources privy to it said it would emphasise that the Mumbai incident was not strictly a Pakistan-India issue.

Pakistan's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Wajid Shamsul Hassan indicated in a recent interview that investigations had revealed the terrorist attack was not planned in Pakistan.

''Pakistani territory was not used so far as the investigators have made their conclusions,'' Hassan had said in the interview. ''It could have been some other place,'' he added.

The investigators were intensely probing if at least one of the Mumbai attackers was of Bangladesh origin, the sources said.

A senior western diplomat confirmed this and said there was a strong possibility that one of the attackers was a Bangladeshi national.

It has already been established that Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving gunman involved in the Mumbai attacks, was of Pakistani origin, but the identity of the other nine terrorists killed in the incident was yet to be finally determined, although India has been claiming that they were Pakistanis.

Although the Bangladesh connection has emerged quite prominently in the investigations, there were also clear indications that some of the planning for the attacks was done in Dubai and there was also an element of local Indian support.

Investigators believed it would have been almost impossible to plan and execute an attack of this proportion and sophistication without the local Indian support - a fact India has been shying away from.

The sources said that the two sets of questions given to India by Pakistan also touched this aspect. India has responded to only one set and that also indirectly through US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), while reply

to the second set of questions was awaited,they added.

In a related development, the FBI was reported to have sought access from the Indian authorities to two militants, Fahim Arshad Ansari and Sabbauddin, who were arrested by Uttar Pradesh police some time between February and March last year for having made reconnaissance of several sensitive places and were later questioned for the Mumbai attacks.

The investigators also suggest that the attack may be remotely linked to Al Qaeda's international terror network. It should be recalled that the HuJI-B, now being suspected of involvement in the attack, had been established in 1992 with

material assistance and inspiration from Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF).