Mumbai attack: Satellite phone vital clue to solve mystery (UPDATED II)

UPDATES: NEW DELHI: In the fresh leads from the Mumbai :terror attack investigation, Intelligence sources say they intercepted conversation between Muzammil, Muzaffarabad chief of LeT operations, and a certain Yahya in Bangladesh. Yahya arranged SIM cards, fake ID-cards primarily from western countries like Mauritius, UK, US, Australia. A Mauritian identity card was found on one of the terrorists shot down. The satellite phone found on the MV Kuber also has shown that calls were made to Jalalabad. These calls were traced to Zakir Ur Rehman, a chief of training of the LeT. Intelligence sources have also revealed that in the second week of July, intelligence officials knew about 25 terrorists training in the Pakistan village of Durbari Mitho, and that an ISI agent was also involved in the training.

NEW DELHI: The gang of terrorists who wreaked mayhem in Mumbai for three days were made to believe by their Lashkar bosses that they were not being sent on a suicide mission and that they would be coming back alive. In a sensational disclosure made by Ajmal, the jihadi nabbed alive by Mumbai cops, the group had planned to sail out on Thursday. Their recruiters had even charted out the return route for them and stored it on the GPS device which they had used to navigate their way to the Mumbai shoreline. This suggests that the terrorists were willing to undertake a mission which they knew would be very risky, but not necessarily suicidal. Sources said that the bait of safe return must have been used by the recruiters to convince the wavering among the group to join the audacious plot against Mumbai. Ajmal made another important disclosure: that all terrorists were trained in marine warfare along with the special course Daura-e-Shifa conducted by the Lashkar-e-Toiba in what at once transforms the nature of the planning from a routine terror strike and into a specialized raid by commandos. Battle-hardened ATS officials are surprised by the details of the training the terrorists were put through before being despatched for the macabre mission. This was very different from a terrorist attack, and amounted to an offensive from the seam, said a source. Ajmal has revealed the name of his fellow jihadis all Pakistani citizens as Abu Ali, Fahad, Omar, Shoaib, Umer, Abu Akasha, Ismail, Abdul Rahman (Bara) and Abdul Rahman (Chhota). The account of Ajmal also strengthens the doubt of the complicity of powerful elements in the Pakistani establishment. According to him, the group set off on November 21 from an isolated creek near Karachi without the deadly cargo of arms and ammunition they were to use against the innocents in Mumbai. The group received arms and ammunition on board a large Pakistani vessel which picked them up the following day. The vessel, whose ownership is now the subject of an international probe, had four Pakistanis apart from the crew. A day later, they came across an Indian-owned trawler, Kuber, which was promptly commandeered on the seas. Four of the fishermen who were on the trawler were killed, but its skipper, or tandel in fishermen lingo, Amarjit Singh, was forced to proceed towards India. Amarjit was killed the next day, and Ismail the terrorist who was killed at Girgaum Chowpaty took the wheel. A trained sailor, Ismail used the GPS to reach Mumbai coast on November 26. The group, however, slowed down its advance as they had reached during the day time while the landing was planned after dusk. The group shifted to inflatable boats, before disembarking at Badhwar Park in Cuffe Parade. From there, they mandated to kill indiscriminately, particularly white foreign tourists, and spare Muslims split up into five batches. Two of them Ismail and Ajmal took a taxi to Victoria Terminus. Three other batches of two each headed for Oberoi Hotel, Cafe Leopold and Nariman House. The remaining four went to Taj Hotel.

MUMBAI: The satellite phone and global positioning system (GPS) map recovered from a trawler abandoned in the high seas is now among the most crucial pieces of evidence connected to the terror attacks on Mumbai. he vessel, Kuber, was found drifting 5-6 nautical miles off the Mumbai shore; the entire crew is missing except for the group leader, Amar Narayan, 38, whose body was found on board with limbs tied, blindfolded and neck slit open. Kuber is believed to be the mother boat used to launch the inflatable dinghies which carried the terrorists to the seafront at Colaba. Intelligence agencies are scanning the satellite phone's records to track the places from where calls were made to the vessel. The boat has been now handed over to the Mumbai police. The trawler had last set out from Porbandar, 310 nautical miles from Mumbai, on November 13. Owned by a man named Vinod Masani, it had a five-member crew. Sources believe it was most likely hijacked near the maritime boundary, where incursions by vessels on both sides are frequent. The terrorists are believed to have used the trawler for cover to make the journey to Mumbai without being detected by the Coast Guard. A nondescript, 25-metre-long fishing vessel bearing the name ‘Kuber’ in the Gujarati script and a Gujarat registration number would have barely raised an eyebrow in a region dotted with numerous such boats. To complete the appearance, it carried nearly 50 kg of marinated fish, rice and lentils. "Most of the time, we act on specific information. We rarely check such fishing trawlers with Indian flags,'' admitted a Coast Guard officer. Four fishermen who were on the boat, Balwant Prabhu, 45, Mukesh Rathod, 20, and Natu Nanu, 20, of Navsari and Ramesh Nagji, 37, of Junagadh are still missing. The owner of Kuber - Vinod Masani and his brother - Hiralal have also been detained by the Gujarat police. Kuldeep Singh Sheroan, commanding officer of Coast Guard ship Sankalp said the crew leader Amar Narayan was killed in a brutal manner by the terrorists. They tied his limbs and put a band around his eyes and then knifed his neck, he said.