The lone surviving gunman in the Mumbai attacks has made a surprise confession at his trial, saying he was recruited by a militant group inside Pakistan.
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[headline] => Mumbai gunman pleads guilty
[abstract] => The lone surviving gunman in the Mumbai attacks has made a surprise
confession at his trial, saying he was recruited by a militant group
inside Pakistan.
[keywords] => mumbai, gunman, attacks, ajmal kasab, guilty
[content] =>
The lone surviving gunman in the Mumbai attacks has made a surprise confession at his trial, saying he was recruited by a militant group inside Pakistan.
Ajmal Kasab said he left a low paying job to look for training to become a professional robber.
The confession bolstered India's charges that terrorist groups in neighbouring Pakistan were behind the well-planned attack and that Pakistan is not doing enough to clamp down on them.
The attack in which 166 people died severely strained relations and put the brakes on a peace process between the nuclear-armed enemies.
In his confession Kasab described how he sprayed automatic gunfire at commuters while a comrade hurled grenades inside a railway station during one of India's worst terrorist acts.
"I was in front of Abu Ismail who had taken such a position that no one could see him," Kasab told the court.
"We both fired, Abu Ismail and I. We fired on the public," he said, speaking in Hindi.
Plea reversed
Kasab, a Pakistani who had consistently denied a role in the November rampage, reversed his plea without warning, shocking even his lawyer.
In a calmly delivered statement, Kasab described how the attackers were sent from Karachi, Pakistan, by four men - some of them known leaders with the Pakistan-based Islamicextremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
They travelled by boat arriving in Mumbai on November 26 , where they unleashed three days of mayhem. The 10 gunmen, armed with automatic rifles and grenades, split into pairs and killed people at a railway station, a Jewish centre, a hospital and two five-star hotels, including the Taj Mahal.
Death penalty looms
Kasab faces the death penalty if convicted on the charges of murder and waging war against the country.
As the 66th day of Kasab's trial started Monday morning, he stood up just as a prosecution witness was to take the stand, and addressed the judge.
"Sir, I plead guilty to my crime," said Kasab, 21, triggering a collective gasp in the courtroom.
After a debate on the legality of such a confession, Kasab's statement was recorded, and the judge said he would have Kasab sign each page of the document, which would be reviewed by his lawyer, formally reversing his plea from innocent to guilty.
Details revealed
Kasab said he and Abu Ismail went to the Chatrapati Shivaji railway station in a taxi and left a bomb in the vehicle.
"I went to the restroom and attached a battery to a bomb and put it in a bag. Abu followed me to (the) restroom and I asked him what I should do with the bomb."
"'Let's see,' Abu told me," he said.
They moved to the railroad station hall, packed with commuters. Abu Ismail put the bag near a pillar and stood close to a wall where they began shooting at people. Soon, policemen arrived. The bomb never exploded.
"I was firing and Abu was hurling hand grenades ... I fired at a policeman after which there was no firing from the police side," Kasab said.
From the railway station, where they killed more than 50, the two went to Cama hospital. A few more were killed there. The pair then went to the Chowpatty beach in a hijacked vehicle where Ismail was killed and Kasab was captured after a shootout with the police.
Kasab was treated for wounds and has since been held in solitary confinement in Mumbai's Arthur Road Jail where the trial is being conducted.
The siege of Mumbai, India's financial and entertainment capital, ended on November 29 with troops storming the Taj Mahal Hotel where some gunmen were holding hostages. All attackers except Kasab were killed.
Poverty forced crime
Kasab told how he became involved with Lashkar-e-Taiba. He said he became unhappy with his low wages as a shop assistant in the town of Jhelum in Pakistan and left for Rawalpindi with the intention of becoming a professional robber.
While attending a festival in Rawalpindi, he and a friend decided to seek out the mujahedeen, who they thought could help train them as bandits. They went to a local bazaar and were directed to the local Lashkar office.
Before being sent to India, Kasab said he lived in a house in Pakistan's largest city Karachi for a month-and-a-half with 10 other young men. All of them were transferred to another home and taken to sea where they met four handlers.
One of them was an Indian, who taught the attackers Hindi, he said.
Kasab originally confessed after his capture, but later withdrew that statement, saying it had been made under duress.
Last week the Pakistan government gave a dossier to India providing new evidence of Lashkar-e-Taiba's role in the Mumbai attack and naming Kasab as a participant.
The trial will resume today.
[start_date] => 21 July 2009 | 06:24:00 AM
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[label] => Mumbai police reform would-be militants
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[label] => Mumbai attackers trial adjourned: lawyer
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[label] => Mumbai suspect interview released
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[headline] => Mumbai suspect interview released
[abstract] => A British news outlet has released footage of a police interview with a Pakistani man on trial over last year's Mumbai attacks.
[content] =>
A British news outlet has released footage of a police interview with a Pakistani man on trial over last year's Mumbai attacks, in which he admitted working for militant group Laskhar-e-Taiba (LeT).
Mohammed Ajmal Kasab is accused of being the sole survivor among a 10-member Islamist militant commando group that stormed the city last November, killing 166 people during a 60-hour bloodbath.
In a video filmed by Indian police as they interviewed him in hospital shortly after his arrest, which was broadcast by Channel Four News, Kasab says: "We were all supposed to die. He said we would go to heaven".
Some of the excerpts correlate with a partial transcript of the interrogation published in March in a Mumbai newspaper, which said it was a verbatim account of Kasab's questioning for about an hour after his arrest.
Channel Four News said the video is not being used as evidence in Kasab's trial because he has retracted the confession, saying it was made under duress.
Kasab was asked how many people he killed, and replied: "Don't know, kept firing and firing." Asked who he was supposed to kill, he said: "Just people."
He said he worked for LeT, the Pakistan-based militant group, adding that his father introduced them. His father was paid in return for Kasab's work.
"He said: 'These people make loads of money and so will you. You don't have to do anything difficult. We'll have money. We won't be poor any more'," Kasab recalled his father telling him.
The full footage will be shown on Channel Four's Dispatches program on Tuesday, along with recordings of many of the shooters' audio conversations with controllers who urged them on.
Some of the shooters held two Jewish hostages captive, and were told to "do it". "What, shoot them?" one shooter asked. "Yes, do it. Sit them up and shoot them in the back of the head," the controller replied.
Kasab, 21, is accused of "waging war against India", which carries the death penalty, and with destabilising the government, murder, kidnap, robbery, "causing terror" and smuggling illegal arms and high explosives.
He pleaded not guilty to all charges when he appeared in court in May.
[content_type_id] => 3
[site_name] => World News Australia
[articledate] => 29 June 2009
[articletime] => 29 June 2009
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[article_id] => 1053642
[headline] => Mumbai attackers trial adjourned: lawyer
[abstract] => The trial in Pakistan of the five accused of involvement in last year's terror attacks in Mumbai has been adjourned until next week, a lawyer said on Saturday.
[content] =>
The trial in Pakistan of the five accused of involvement in last year's terror attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai has been adjourned until next week, the defence lawyer said on Saturday.
A total of 166 people died and more than 300 were injured in the November 26-29 attacks, which saw 10 heavily-armed gunmen target luxury hotels, the city's main railway station, a popular restaurant and Jewish centre.
"The hearing has been adjourned till July 25 and I was given access to the accused persons," defence lawyer Shahbaz Rajput told AFP.
"Judge Baqar Ali Rana allowed me to meet the accused persons and I have filed documents to defend them," he said.
"We have requested the court that we should be provided details of evidence against us so that we can prepare the defence."
Rajput said the hearing was adjourned after the state made a request for in-camera proceedings.
Relations between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan worsened dramatically after the carnage in India's financial capital that New Delhi blamed on the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
Pakistan interior minister Rehman Malik said last week the trial against the five accused, including the alleged mastermind Zakiduddin Lakhvi, would be "transparent".
Journalists are not allowed to witness the proceedings at a special court room set up in the high security Adiala prison in Rawalpindi, a garrison city adjoining capital Islamabad.
Prosecution officials were not immediately available for comment.
The Pakistan and Indian premiers met in Egypt on Thursday and vowed to cooperate in the fight against terror.
But New Delhi insisted peace talks remain on hold until the perpetrators of the devastating Mumbai attacks are brought to justice.
[content_type_id] => 3
[site_name] => World News Australia
[articledate] => 18 July 2009
[articletime] => 18 July 2009
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[headline] => Mumbai police reform would-be militants
[abstract] => Police in Mumbai have successfully "reformed" 15 potential Islamist extremists as part of a new "hearts and minds" approach to counter-terrorism.
[content] =>
Police in Mumbai have successfully "reformed" 15 potential Islamist extremists as part of a new "hearts and minds" approach to counter-terrorism.
The Mumbai Mirror newspaper said that instead of arresting and jailing such individuals, the city's Anti-Terrorism Squad was now using them as a vital part of its intelligence-gathering operation.
"After identifying such people, we counsel them," ATS chief KP Raghuvanshi was quoted as saying.
"We have in place an elaborate process where we try to make them understand the futility of their supposed religious war and wean them away from their jihad mentality. We have already reformed about 15 such people.
"A reformed jihadi will not only stop others from becoming terrorists but is also a good source of intelligence. It is part of our non-combat strategy to counter terrorism."
One of the police's successes was a 22-year-old Muslim man from south Mumbai, who spent three months at a training camp run by the banned, Pakistan-based Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the tabloid said.
He was supposed to be part of a sleeper cell in the city awaiting orders to strike until he came to the police's attention, the report said.
Ten gunmen, allegedly trained, equipped and financed by LeT, attacked Mumbai in November last year, killing 166 people and wounding more than 300 in a wave of strikes on landmark targets across the south of the city.
Raghuvanshi's predecessor was shot dead as he responded to the attacks. His alleged killer, Pakistani national Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, is currently on trial.
The ATS chief told the newspaper that radicalised youths are brought to police headquarters and encouraged to talk.
Officers then "logically counter their misplaced idea of injustice and express solidarity with their genuine grievances", such as prejudice and violence against Muslims in India, he added.
Police also seek to convince the young men that they are pawns in a bigger game and of the potential consequences if they act on their radical views.
Muslim clerics are also brought in to tell them that the killing of innocent people is contrary to Islamic belief, another unnamed ATS officer was quoted as saying.
The program includes help for the young men, many of whom are unemployed, to set up in business.
"We build such relationships with these people that they give us information about who in their colony or community is being contacted for indoctrination or if any sleeper cells are being formed," the officer said.
[content_type_id] => 3
[site_name] => World News Australia
[articledate] => 20 July 2009
[articletime] => 20 July 2009
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