KASAB

Rommel Rodrigues

Description

On 26 November 2008 ten heavily armed terrorists entered Mumbai. They headed for the city s iconic landmarks and the mayhem they unleashed lasted nearly 60 hours. The audacious terror attacks jolted Mumbai like never before. Even as they mourned; the residents of Maximum City demanded answers. But the information they got in return accounts of the investigation; government rhetoric; newspaper reports; television features; books and even a film was sketchy at best. Meanwhile; the courts continued with their prosecution of Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab; the lone surviving 26/11 gunman. The broad picture available to the public is of the Pakistan-based terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba and its ringleaders such as Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi training; arming and dispatching ten young men in a boat to attack India s commercial capital. All we have been told about Kasab is that he was just another recruit brainwashed into carrying out the plot against Mumbai. Kasab: The Face of 26/11 breaks new ground by painstakingly piecing together Kasab s terror trail. The narrative follows Kasab through the bylanes of Pakistani villages and cities as he made his way towards PoK; the dense forests where the terrorist-training camps are situated; the trains; buses and jeeps he boarded; the Indian vessel he and the others hijacked en route to Mumbai s shores; Kasab s capture and incarceration. Rommel Rodrigues path-breaking investigative journalism fleshes out for the first time the well thought-out planning and organization that lay behind the attacks of 26/11.

Sujets

• Histoire
• List of terrorist incidents
• History of Asia
• India

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184752113
• Langue: English

Extrait

A CHILLING RECREATION OF THE VIOLENT LIFE OF MOHAMMED AJMAL AMIR KASAB
On 26 November 2008 ten heavily armed terrorists entered Mumbai. They headed for the city’s iconic landmarks and the mayhem they unleashed lasted nearly sixty hours.
The audacious terror attacks jolted Mumbai like never before. Even as they mourned, the residents of Maximum City demanded answers. But the information they got in return—accounts of the investigation, government rhetoric, newspaper reports, television features, books and even a film—was sketchy at best. Meanwhile, the courts continued with their prosecution of Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving 26/11 gunman.
The broad picture available to the public is of the Pakistan-based terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba and its ringleaders such as Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi training, arming and dispatching ten young men in a boat to attack India’s commercial capital. All we have been told about Kasab is that he was just another recruit brainwashed into carrying out the plot against Mumbai.
Kasab: The Face of 26/11 breaks new ground by painstakingly piecing together Kasab’s terror trail. The narrative follows Kasab through the bylanes of Pakistani villages and cities as he made his way towards PoK; the dense forests where the terrorist-training camps are situated; the trains, buses and jeeps he boarded; the Indian vessel he and the others hijacked en route to Mumbai’s shores; Kasab’s capture and incarceration.
Rommel Rodrigues’ path-breaking investigative journalism fleshes out for the first time the well thought out planning and organization that lay behind the attacks of 26/11.
Cover illustration by Vikrant Shitole
PENGUIN BOOKS KASAB: THE FACE OF 26/11
Rommel Rodrigues has been a journalist since 1993. He has worked for Fortune India, Business Newsweek, The Observer of Business & Politics and Afternoon Despatch & Courier, and covered business, politics and current affairs. Rodrigues reported extensively on the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. He has been with the New Indian Express since 2004.
KASAB
The Face of 26/11
______________________________
Rommel Rodrigues
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published by Penguin Books India 2010
Copyright © Rommel Rodrigues 2010
All rights reserved
The views and opinions expressed in this e-book are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by him which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same
ISBN: 978-01-4341-547-3
This digital edition published in 2011.
e-ISBN: 978-81-8475-211-3
This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above-mentioned publisher of this e-book.
For the victims of 26/11
Contents
Copyright
Author’s Note
1. THE BUTCHERS
2. A NEW BUTCHER IS BORN
3. DESTINATION LAHORE
4. THE SECOND STINT: AT THE DURBAR
5. THE BUTCHER BECOMES A COOK AND A CROOK
6. A NEW ABODE, A NEW CAREER
7. FOOTSTEPS TO PARADISE: MURIDKE AND MANSEHRA
8. THE NEFARIOUS TERROR CAMPS
9. REVISITING MUZAFFARABAD
10. MARINE CAMPS IN SINDH
11. THE FINAL MEETING
12. MISSION CST
13. MISSION RESCHEDULED
14. THE FINAL VOYAGE: OUT OF PAKISTAN
15. APPROACHING THE INDIAN HORIZON
16. SAFE LANDING AND FANNING OUT IN MUMBAI
17. UNLEASHING HELL AT THE CST
18. MOVING TOWARDS CAMA HOSPITAL
19. ILLUSTRIOUS OFFICERS ON ‘CALL OF DUTY’
20. THE ILL-FATED QUALIS, THE BRAVE MEN
21. THE FACE OF TERROR: AJMAL KASAB
22. FAIR TRIAL FOR THE BUTCHER
AUTHOR’S NOTE
M umbai has been scarred by many macabre terror attacks in the past two decades. The serial bomb blasts in March 1993 killed more than 250 people and maimed hundreds in a single day; in August 2003 deadly RDX bombs exploded in the busy bylanes of Zaveri Bazaar and near the iconic Gateway of India, killing 52 people; the July 2006 bombings in jam-packed train compartments killed 187 passengers and injured more than 800.
It most cases it has been proved conclusively that that the perpetrators were holed up in Pakistan. The direct involvement of the Pakistan-based terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba with the backing of that country’s Inter-Services Intelligence in over half a dozen terror cases, too, has been evident. Pakistan has, of course, always denied that its territory has been used for terror activities.
The 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, however, changed everything.
On 26 November Lashkar-e-Taiba’s fidayeen jihadis—carrying haversacks full of deadly arms and ammunition—traversed the Arabian Sea, merrily stepped out from a small rubber dinghy on to the shores of India, and unleashed a carnage that extended for hours and days at length at several iconic locations of Mumbai.
But this time, Lashkar’s direct involvement was almost immediately discovered.
Within a couple of hours into the attacks, Indian security agencies—especially the technical experts of the Mumbai Police—were tapping into conversations between the terrorists and their Pakistan-based Lashkar masters, who were motivating and directing the jihadis holed up at the Taj Mahal Palace, the Hotel Oberoi Towers and the Nariman House.
And soon Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone attacker to be captured alive, came clean about the plot and the people behind it.
Though I had started my career as a journalist before the March 1993 serial bomb blasts and had, over the years, covered most of the terror assaults on Mumbai, I was numbed by the brazenness of the 26/11 attacks.
As I covered the events for my newspaper, and later when I followed the investigations into the attacks, I, like everybody else, gathered bits and pieces of information about Ajmal Kasab’s life. Sketchy accounts of the ten terrorists’ voyage to Mumbai and the events during the attacks appeared in various media, a couple of books were published and there was even talk of a film based on Ajmal Kasab’s life.
In due course, Pakistan accepted that the 26/11 terror attacks were indeed planned on its soil and that the ten terrorists and their masters were its citizens. It even pressed charges against several people and set up a trial court to prosecute the perpetrators. The legal process being followed in Pakistan, the arrests, the charge sheets, the case proceedings, etc. were extensively reported in the media. As a result, more details about the background of the attacks found their way into the public domain.
By now I had become curious about Ajmal Kasab, the baby-faced monster. How was he indoctrinated in the idea of jihad? Where all did he go before he landed into Lashkar’s arms? What was the terror outfit’s training process like? Where were all the camps located? How did the terrorist manage to reach the shores of Mumbai?
Though thousands of different accounts were available, I started compiling a tight narrative about Ajmal Kasab. The video of his questioning in hospital, which soon appeared on video-sharing websites, became my starting point. Since that was not enough, I began to piece together an account of his life (till he landed at Mumbai) from Indian and Pakistani media reports. Several reports were about his village, his family, his places of work; some listed certain locations he visited during his association with Lashkar and the marine camps where he trained. The accounts of some of those who were being prosecuted in Pakistan were also helpful.
Later, the summary of the charge sheet filed in the Mumbai courts and some details from the dossiers exchanged between India and Pakistan appeared in the public domain, giving further substance to the storyline.
I relied on my sources in Pakistan, most of whom are in the media, to corroborate the information I intended to use. All along, my endeavour was to have as many precise details in my account as possible.
In the weeks following the 26/11 attacks, I was deeply moved by the accounts of the victims. In the second part of this book—which covers the events at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, where Ajmal Kasab and his accomplice fired at a huge crowd—I have tried to record the pain they were subjected to.
For me, this book is less about Ajmal Kasab or his life and more about what goes into the making of a deranged fidayeen jihadi, whose mission is to kill and get killed. I have taken up Ajmal Kasab’s story to merely build up the plot and chart his journey towards becoming a cold-blooded murderer. It is an attempt to expose, perhaps for the first