Pakistan's Probe Finds Local Links To Attacks On Mumbai

by Sanjay Jha | December 30, 2008 at 11:14 pm

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After dithering for almost one month of Mumbai terror attacks for the first time Pakistan has given indications of complicity of a top Lashkar commander, Zarar Shah.

Pakistani security officials in their probe has discovered the role in the Mumbai terror attack during interrogation. US has given intercepts of a phone call between militant commander in Pakistan and one of the attackers at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, the site of a 60-hour confrontation with Indian security forces.

Pakistan's own investigation of terror attacks in Mumbai has begun to show substantive links between the 10 gunmen and an Islamic militant group that its powerful spy agency spent years supporting, say people with knowledge of the probe.

At least one top leader of militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, or "Army of the Pure," captured in a raid earlier this month in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, has confessed the group's involvement in the attack as India and the U.S. have alleged, according to a senior Pakistani security official.

The disclosure could add new international pressure on Pakistan to accept that the attacks, which left 171 dead in India, originated within its borders and to prosecute or extradite the suspects. That raises difficult and potentially destabilizing issues for the country's new civilian government, its military and the spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence -- which is conducting interrogations of militants it once cultivated as partners.