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Decoding the Headley-Rana case
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Wilson John
16 November 2009
Who controlled the activities of David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, the two key Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) operators arrested by Federal Bureau of Investigation early this month? Was it Hafiz Saeed, the LeT supremo still roaming free in Pakistan? Or were there more than one handlers?
Some important keys to these puzzles lie in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
First key is the LeT network based in Bangladesh with extensive links to the trans-national terrorist group, Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami (HuJI) and its several local allies, including some influential political and religious leaders. LeT has been expanding its network in Bangladesh for 14 years. Within days of the Rana-Headley arrests, the Bangladesh security agencies arrested three LeT operatives from Dhaka--Mufti Harun Izahar, son of Islami Oikya Jote (IOJ) leader Mufti Izaharul Islam, Shahidul Islam and Al Amin alias Saiful. All three had regular conversations with David Headley, LeT chief Hafiz Saeed and LeT’s Bangladesh coordinator, Sheikh Abdur Rehman.
Harun, who also ran an Islamic kindergarten school in Chittagong, said Hafiz Saeed spoke to him on the mobile and asked him to target the US embassy in Dhaka. He said Saeed spoke to him in Arabic and gave him specific instructions on how to carry out the attack. Harun had recently visited Pakistan. For the attack, Harun and his associates got 600,000 takas from LeT’s chief financial officer, Indian-born Saudi national Mahmoud Mohammad Ahmed Bahaziq. Bahaziq, who recruited Dawood Ibrahim and Azzam Ghauri to LeT, is a close associate of Hafiz Saeed. Ghauri was one of the first LeT commanders in India, and a partner of Abdul Karim Tunda, who became the operational commander of the terrorist group in Bangladesh. Ghauri was killed in an encounter in 2000.
Following the arrest of Harun and his two aides, the Bangladesh police arrested three more LeT operatives subsequently. The police suspect that there were at least 20 more, both Bangladeshi and Indian nationals, who could be involved in the foiled terrorist plot. Some of them are from Kerala and other South Indian states and work primarily in the textile sector.
Harun and his aides were not an independent LeT cell but only part of a larger network which was being strengthened for quite sometime. The first inkling of such a network, incidentally, came when two key LeT leaders were arrested in Bangladesh in July this year--Maulana Mohammad Mansur Ali alias Maulana Habibullah and Mufti Sheikh Obaidullah. Ali is a Afghan Jihad veteran. Both worked closely with HuJI in Bangladesh, training several Indian and Bangladeshi nationals in weapons and explosives.
Two intriguing links can be found in the dossier which project the trans-national nature of LeT’s expansion in Asia for the past several years. One is that both Habibullah and Obaidullah were arrested on the basis of information provided by two aides of Dawood Ibrahim, Zahid Sheikh and Dawood Merchant, arrested in Dhaka earlier. Sheikh said there were about 150-paid D-company men in Bangladesh and their associates included former ministers, senior police officials and top businessmen. LeT operations in Bangladesh, incidentally, draw large funding from some top businessmen dealing in pharmaceuticals.
Both Habibullah and Obaidullah drew a month salary of 7000 takas from Sheikh Abdur Rahman, LeT’s commander for Bangladesh based in Pakistan. Rahman has since been arrested in Pakistan but strangely enough, there is no word on it in the Pakistan media. Rahman had also bankrolled Maulana Harun who was working with David Headley to carry out terrorist attacks. Hardly any detail about Rahman is known. There are two Abdur Rahmans in the LeT hierarchy--one is Mufti Abdur Rahman Hafiz, one of the teachers at Muridke, and another is Abdur Rahman Makki, in charge of LeT’s external affairs, and brother-in-law of Hafiz Saeed. Makki, a fierce proponent of suicide terrorism, has been in charge of organising LeT’s networks in Asia and Europe.
Another intriguing link is Amir Reza Khan, commander of the Asif Reza Commando Force (ARCF), a little known group which was involved in the 2002 attack on the US consulate in Kolkata, West Bengal. Reza, like Rahman, is today in Pakistan. The Bangladeshi Maulanas told the police they were in constant touch with Amir Reza while organising the LeT network. Amir Reza is wanted for the Partho Roy Burman abduction case (July 2001) in which a part of the ransom money, $100,000, was wired to the 9/11 leader Mohammad Atta via Aftab Ansari and Syed Omar Sheikh. The role of the then ISI Chief, Lt. General Mahmud, was also exposed in facilitating the money transfer. Reza is also involved in creating Indian Mujahideen (IM), the new terrorist group which carried a series of attacks in India in 2008.
The third key in Pakistan is Illyas Kashmiri, a former Special Services Group (SSG), member who took up terrorism and linked up with LeT although he floated his own outfit called 313 Brigade. He was a favourite of the Army and once the then Rawalpindi Corps Commander, Lt. General Mahmood Ahmad, had visited his training facilities at Kotli, Pak occupied Kashmir. Kashmiri was a mercenary jihadi, offering his services to groups that were in need of expert trainers. Kashmiri was a key trainer of `mujahideen` during the Afghan jihad and was an expert in explosives. Kashmiri had several former Army officers in his group, one of them was Major Haroon Ashique, another former SSG officer, who worked with LeT operational commander, Zaki ur-Rahman Lakhvi. Lakhvi was one of the masterminds of the 2008 Mumbai attack. Headley and Rana were in touch in Kashmiri.
Lakhvi’s contacts in the army were Brigadiers Ijaz Shah and Riazul Chibb, both retired ISI departmental heads in Punjab. Shah, a close confidant of President Pervez Musharraf and creator of Jaish-e-Mohammad, was handling Illyas Kashmiri before he fell out with him. Chibb was accused by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of conspiring against her. Even Rana, in his emails, had referred to two of his relatives in Pakistan Army-- Brigadier Mohawat Rana and Brigadier Sibte Hassan Rana--who were willing to help them. Though nothing more is known about Headley-Rana’s Pak Army links, there are enough indications that a transnational terrorist operation of the magnitude the duo were planning could not have been carried without the active support of Pakistan Army and ISI, facing a serious threat from terrorist groups that have cut their umbilical cords with them.
The attack plan, as becoming evident now, had two specific targets--Denmark and India-- and one strategic objective: to divert the global attention and pressure on Pakistan’s western front and in Afghanistan. The Denmark attack could have come from a western country while the Indian plot was to be carried out by LeT networks from Bangladesh.
Wilson John is Senior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.
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