[Reader-list] Kitnay Mastermind Thay?

[Shivam Vij शिवम् विज्]

Dear friends,

The daily paper Mail Today, published in Delhi, has been doing an
extraordinary set of stories on the investigations into the various
blasts conducted by the "Indian Mujahideen". While the rest of the
media has barely begun to use words like 'allegedly', 'police claim',
Mail Today has been investigating the investigations. They
unfortunately have only an epaper for a website. I have taken the
pains to copy-paste, reformat and post on this list some of the
reports.

best
shivam




MULTIPLYING MASTERMINDS

Mumbai Police claim they have nabbed the real Indian Mujahideen boss
responsible for all bombings since 2005, including Delhi & Ahmedabad
Karnataka rubbishes Delhi Police claims

By Krishna Kumar in Mumbai
Mail Today, Delhi, 25 September 2008
mailtoday.in

Days after the Delhi Police named Mohammad Atif Ameen as the Indian
Mujahideen (IM) chief, the Mumbai Police claimed to have identified
the real Indian Mujahideen mastermind responsible for terrorist
strikes across India since 2005. In a hurriedly-convened press
conference on Wednesday, Mumbai Police Commissioner Hassan Gafoor
announced the arrest of five IM members and said they were involved in
the recent bomb blasts across the country and had plans to attack
Mumbai. He named Mohammad Sadiq Shaikh as the man from whom Atif, the
alleged leader of the Delhi bombers, reportedly took his orders.

In the process, the Mumbai Police introduced new characters and
debunked old theories of the police forces of Uttar Pradesh (UP),
Jaipur, Gujarat and Delhi, each of whom had earlier claimed credit for
arresting the 'real' terror mastermind behind bomb attacks in their
states and elsewhere. Walliullah was supposed to have triggered the
Uttar Pradesh blasts in 2006, Shahbaz Hussain was believed to be
behind the Jaipur blasts in May, and Abu Bashar and Tauqeer had
allegedly masterminded the Gujarat blasts in July. Those theories
seemed to hold till the Delhi Police changed the script. They said
that Atif plotted UP, Jaipur, Gujarat and the Delhi blasts. Now, the
Mumbai Police has introduced Sadiq Shaikh as yet another mastermind
and said he controlled Atif. Gafoor said that the five arrested men
had planned the Ahmedabad and Delhi blasts and were behind every blast
in the country since 2005. "It was not Atif Ameen who was the
mastermind. He was just the operations guy. It was actually Sadiq who
used to control Atif and made him do the terror attacks," said Gafoor.

This contradicts the Delhi Police claim, made after the police action
in Delhi's Jamia Nagar on September 19, that Atif had masterminded the
series of terror attacks across the country since 2006. If this is
confusing, read on. According to the Mumbai Police, even Sadiq is not
the 'real' master mind. "Amir Razza, who is residing in Pakistan, is
the one who is controlling Sadiq," claimed Mumbai's joint police
commissioner (crime) Rakesh Maria. Since Razza is in Pakistan, it is
not known who 'controls' him. Like the police from other states, the
Mumbai Police insisted that the ones they had caught were the ones
that had orchestrated the strikes in other states. The five have been
identified as Afzal Mutalib Usmani (32), Mohammed Sadiq Shaikh,
Mohammed Arif Shaikh (38), Mohammed Zakir Shaikh (28) and Mohammed
Ansar Sheikh (31). The Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and the
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami had also allegedly trained them, Gafoor
claimed.

Fifteen detonators, eight kg of ball bearings, four fully-active
electronic circuits which are used in bombs, one submachine carbine,
two .38 revolvers, 30 cartridges of 9 mm carbine and eight cartridges
of .38 revolver were reportedly found from them. Maria said, "The five
(IM) members have assisted or been actively involved in the unexploded
bombs in Varanasi, the Shramjeevi Express attack, the Sankatmochan
Temple blast, the blasts in a waiting room in Varanasi railway
station, the 7/11 blasts in Mumbai local trains and all other blasts
in the country that have occurred from 2005."

This runs counter to what the Uttar Pradesh police have claimed
earlier. According to them, Walliullah was the mastermind of the
Sankatmochan Temple blast in 2006. The perplexing series of claims on
terror masterminds has resulted in a somersault of sorts in the Mumbai
Police's own claims made earlier. On Wednesday, it said the five men
whose arrests it announced had also engineered the 7/11 blasts by
training and helping seven people — who are now in jail — to plant
bombs. But, the state police's anti terrorist squad (ATS) has already
arrested more than seven people for planning 7/11 blasts and said in
its charge sheet that the men were given training by Pakistani
nationals. So how could the five men, who are residents of India,
become Pakistani nationals in the ATS charge sheet? When this was
pointed out to Maria, he had a ready reply, "Those arrested for 7/11
were told by these five men that they were Pakistanis. Hence they
believed these five men and told this during our interrogation."

In all, there is no mention of India's 'Osama bin Laden', Abdul Subhan
Qureshi alias Tauqeer. Tauqeer was said to be the second-in-command
after Abu Bashar but Tuesday's arrests show him missing from the
picture. That's because the Mumbai Police has claimed that Sadiq is
the IM founder. "We are looking for one more person, named Roshan
Khan. It could be that Tauqeer is in touch with Roshan," said Maria
when asked where Tauqeer figured in the terror mastermind jigsaw. The
only thing common in all this is that, like the Delhi Police, all
those arrested are from Azamgarh and the material for the bombs seized
are allegedly from Karnataka. In spite of the spate of arrests of
alleged 'terrorists' across the country, the police were not ready to
guarantee safety. "This is just one of the modules busted, there could
be more."