[lbo-talk] Pakistan is accused of Mumbai train bombs

Sujeet Bhatt sujeet.bhatt at gmail.com
Sat Sep 30 22:11:43 PDT 2006


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/01/wpak01.xml

Pakistan is accused of Mumbai train bombs

By Gethin Chamberlain and Massoud Ansari (Filed: 01/10/2006)

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan was under fresh pressure last night after India accused his intelligence agency of masterminding the Mumbai train bombings that killed 186 people.

Hours after the broadcast of an interview in which Gen Musharraf claimed that the US and its allies would fail in their "war on terror" without the support of Pakistan and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), the senior police officer in charge of the investigation into the bombings dropped a diplomatic bombshell.

Mumbai police commissioner AN Roy said the ISI began planning the July attack in March and later provided training to the Islamic militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, that carried it out.

Mr Roy said many of the suspects had been trained to resist interrogation and that investigators had managed to elicit the information only by drugging them with a "truth serum". When India accused the ISI of responsibility for a 2001 attack on its parliament, the ensuing row pushed the two countries to the brink of war. Yesterday's claims immediately plunged them back into a bitter diplomatic row. Pakistan denied the accusation and warned India that it should not point the finger without evidence.

"This is a baseless and fabricated allegation," said Aftab Sherpao, the interior minister.

The row coincided with the return to Pakistan of Gen Musharraf after a three-week foreign tour during which he has faced questions about Pakistan's commitment to the "war on terror" and the role of his intelligence agency.

But in an interview yesterday on Radio 4's Today he defended the ISI and claimed that the Taliban, not al-Qaeda, posed the greatest threat in the region.

"You will be brought down to your knees if Pakistan doesn't co-operate with you. That is all that I would like to say. Pakistan is the main ally. If we were not with you, you would not manage anything. Let that be clear," he said in the interview, which was recorded after he had held talks with Tony Blair in London on Thursday.

Gen Musharraf was at the centre of another row last night over whether to issue a pardon in the case of Mirza Tahir Hussain, a Briton facing execution for allegedly killing a taxi driver in Pakistan in 1988. Supporters of Mr Hussain, 36, a former Territorial Army soldier from Leeds, claim the driver was shot accidentally during a struggle after he tried to sexually assault Mr Hussain at gunpoint. The high court in Lahore acquitted him but the death penalty was reimposed by sharia courts.

Rab Nawaz Noon, a solicitor for the victim's family, said a pardon would send the wrong message. "Gen Musharraf would be doing it because the boy is a British nat-ional and he had come under pressure from the European Union. That would imply that Pakistan is run at the diktats of someone else."



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list