The names of the alleged handlers of the 26/11 attack perpetrators emerged from the interrogation by Indian officials of the American suspect David Coleman Headley.
The Pakistani government is examining a list of six suspects given by India during recent talks between the foreign secretaries of the two countries in Islamabad.
According to Pakistani media reports, most of the suspects named in the list have been identified by their aliases and cover names.
The suspects include Sajid Mir, Major Abdur Rehman, Brig Riaz, Abu Kafa, Abu Qama and Abu Hamza. The names of the alleged handlers of the 26/11 attack perpetrators emerged from the interrogation by Indian officials of the American suspect David Coleman Headley, who is being tried in the US for a plot to attack the offices of a Danish newspaper that published caricatures of Islam’s prophet in 2005.
India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) is likely to again get access to Headley for further questioning. According to sketchy details provided by the Indians about the new suspects, Sajid Mir is allegedly an ex-armyman and the international operations commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
He is supposedly ‘Individual A’ in the Headley affidavit and ‘Individual B’ in another suspect Tahawwur Hussain Rana’s affidavit submitted in a US court and is associated with both the LeT and Ilyas Kashmiri. He is also reportedly wanted by US and Australian law-enforcement agencies. Maj Abdur Rehman, alias Pasha, as per Indian information, retired from the army in 2007 and was arrested by Pakistani security agencies in September last year for suspected involvement in the Headley case. But he was freed. The third military man pointed out by India, Brig Riaz, is an ex-official of the SCO, the army wing dealing with telecommunications.
The others — Abu Kafa, Abu Qama and Abu Hamza — have been identified by aliases and were allegedly handlers of the Mumbai attackers. Abu Kafa is also the alias of Mazhar Iqbal, one of the seven suspects being tried by the Rawalpindi anti-terrorism court in the Mumbai case. An investigator said it was practically unworkable to find the people identified only by aliases or cover names.
Home minister P Chidambaram, who last week held talks with Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik and foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi in Islamabad, asked Pakistan to rigorously follow up leads that had emerged from Headley’s questioning and arrest other suspects in the carnage.
Chidambaram cautioned that substantive progress in the trust-building process, initiated after a meeting between the prime ministers of both countries in Bhutan in April, would not be possible unless the Mumbai case was resolved.
He hinted that India would expect forward movement from Pakistan on the issue before the July 15 meeting of the foreign ministers.
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