The Mumbai Attack report on Channel4

Ultimately Channel4 has presented us with what we call an complete version of the entire 26/11 attack in Mumbai. It includes tapes from Kasav’s confession, the communication between terrorists and their commander in Pakistan and of course interviews of scores of people.

Initially the whole documentary was available at youtube, but unfortunately it was removed due to copyrights claim by Channel4 (they need their cut too!!). I hope some Indian Tv broadcasters will be able to purchase the copyright to air the same uncut version of the whole documentary. Otherwise, Indians will miss something. I want it to be displayed with few more analysis and interviews – initially by NDTV or IBNLive and later in the National Tv network. We all have right to see what had happened.

Currently the video is available at this site. However, it could be gone anytime soon. I’ll keep updating this post if I find any new site hosting the video.

P.S. – The video, especially the communication between the commander and the terrorists has significant amout of religious content. This should not be used to make a case against some other innocents. I’m afraid it could potentially happen. All these attacks are creation of a handful zealots and those should not be regarded as representetives of their communities. In fact people across the world have condemed this attack irrespective of caste, creed and religion. Punishing the guilty is the only way forward …

Another Flip-flop from Pakistan on Mumbai

I could not believe my eyes when I saw the news on Times website that Pakistan has officially accepted that Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor of the terrorist gang, is a Pakistani citizen. I saw the Dawn News clips also. It was so strange. BBC report says

“After weeks of refusing to confirm the allegations, the foreign ministry said: “We have just been informed… that Ajmal Kasab is a Pakistani national.”"

The Dawn news clips from timesnowonline -

However, the ecstasy did not last long. Within hours they tracked back on the news and sacked the NSA for leaking the news. It’s interesting that the reasons provided for dismissing him -

“Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has dismissed his national security adviser, Mehmood Ali Durrani, amid the tensions with India. … A prime ministerial statement said Mr Durrani had been sacked “for his irresponsible behaviour for not taking the prime minister and other stakeholders into confidence, and a lack of co-ordination on matters of national security”. “

What is “irresponsible” in Pakistan, is very much cheered across the border. Once he is sacked, the denial is back. The Washington Post notes :

“In an interview with CNN, Mahmud Ali Durrani said there appeared to be proof that all 10 gunmen had Pakistani roots. Officials from the Foreign and Information ministries confirmed that assertion, but the Foreign Ministry later retracted its statement, and within hours, government officials and national TV channels reported that Durrani, a former intelligence chief, had been dismissed by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani.”

Last but not the least, none of the Pakistani newspapers covered this story on today’s edition of their newspaper. I am still waiting to see whether they at all publish it.

Update

News media in Pakistan did publish it - link for Daily Times news.

Mumbai and Proofs – II

As I expected, Pakistan has already refused the proofs provided in the dossier from India. The comment came from Salman Bashir, the foreign secretary of Pakistan. I quote from Times of India -

“Within 24 hours of receiving a dossier on the Mumbai attacks, Pakistan has predictably trashed the document. Pakistan foreign secretary Salman Bashir called it “insufficient” and not enough to take action on. “

What were the three “insufficient” proofs? They were basically categorized in three sets -

1. GPS
2. Phone intercepts
3. Confession statement from Ajmal Kasab
4. Materials left by the terrorist team in the boat

The argument against GPS based evicdence is simple – it can be forged. Next the arguments against Confession statements are also very straight – they can be forced confession. So, the last thing remains are the phone intercepts. Some of them are povided by Indian Authorities, the others could be from US Authorities. As the GPS, this also can be forged. Same can be said for the materials retrieved.

This brings me to an important question. What can be a “credible” evidence? The answer is simple. Nothing can be a “credible” evidence. Because the word “credible” involves mutual trust. Since all possible evidences can be forged, so “credibility” of each evidence can always be questioned. The other factor is equally important – the desire to investigate. Everyone knows that Pakistan is lacking in this front – so we can’t expect anything else.

Let me go over GPS and Phone intercepts as proofs. The others can be forged, though no confusion should be there about the identity of Ajmal Kasav (or Kasab) as it is confirmed from four independent resources (Indian Authorities, The Dawn Newspaper of Pakistan, The Geo News Channel of Pakistan, The Observer News Agency of Britain).

I searched cases over the internet and saw a lot of instances where GPS data was used as one of the evidences. For example, a classic speeding ticket can be avoided by providing the GPS data, or the location of the murder (another example) can be confirmed with the same. In an interesting incident,

“In New Brighton, PA, a trucker’s GPS system led police to charge him with setting his own home on fire. GPS records showed his rig was parked about 100 yards from his house at the time of the fire.”

However, the ruling says in one case, only the original recordings can act as evidence, not the description of an agent who saw the GPS data.

“Producing testimony about defendant’s border crossing instead of the GPS data, the court said, was analogous to offering testimony that described security camera footage of an event to prove the event actually occurred rather than introducing the footage itself. This is the type of situation in which the best evidence rule applies, the court said.”

As Indian authorities have the GPS device, recordeings can always be provided along with the device itself. However, neither Pakistan nor India has a past case that accepted GPS data as an evidence, presumably because GPS is not widely used in this part of the world.

The next thing is the Phone intercept. This is widely accepted throughout the world, even as an evidence for extradition under international laws. Ironically, a few days back, Pakistan arrested (another source) one alleged Indian spy (though no official communication is made to India) after tracking his phone.

“Dawn TV identified the Indian citizen as Satish Anand Shukla, of Calcutta, and said he was arrested after a cell phone intercept.”

Pakistani agencies also concluded about the Benazir murder case after intercepting some phone calls.

“The security services intercepted a call from Mehsud on Friday in which he “congratulated his people for carrying out this cowardly act”, said Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, the Interior Ministry’s spokesman.”

So, phone intercepts are very much accepted in Pakistan as a “credible” evidence. There can be no question that Pakistan should ignore these. A report from BBC tracks how different countries use the phone intercepts in court as an evidence.

This is not the first time the denial of evidence is coming from Pakistan. Pakistan already denied any involvement of their citizens in 1999 Kandahar hijacking incident. As Daily Times (Pakistan) says :

“A large body of circumstantial evidence accepted by the international community but not accepted by Pakistan, such as the 1999 hijack of an Indian airliner to Kandahar, have not attracted the articles of the Convention.”

Also, we all know that Pakistan reject all evidences of the genocide in Bangladesh during 1971 Freedom fight. The figure of dead in the genocide is only 26,000 by Pakistan, much less than Bangladesh’s claimed 3 million figure. Almost all international news agencies put the figure in between 1-3 million.

Details of the proofs can be read here. They were presented to Pakistan as well as to a part of International media. The media reports say :

“The dossier, along with a power-point presentation made to diplomats here, narrates a journey of zeal, foibles and careful planning, one whose blow-by-blow media coverage was followed by handlers, believed to be in Pakistan, and used to caution the gunmen on the ground about the movement of Indian security forces and motivate them to keep fighting.”

Let’s see how the matter rolls.

The Hindu has published the full dossier.

Update

Headlines Today discusses the intercepts at Nariman House.

Proofs are removed from Pakistan : FBI confirms

As expected, the FBI did not get any links of Kasav to Faridkot. I mentioned earlier that Pakistan will shift all the proofs from that place and Pakistan proved that I was correct. The press reporting was on the wrong line though, with all Pakistani media reported that “Ajmal Kasav has no links with Pakistan : FBI“. However, the actual statement made by the FBI is (source):

“”No evidence could be collected from the area which could confirm the claim of Ajmal Kasab’s being Pakistani”, “

So, it’s all about evidences. And I wrote earlier how it was removed. Let me add those links once more. Thanks to Geo News (the Pakistani News channel) we all know even how the proofs were removed.

Day 1 : Geo News Reports

Day 2 : Evidences are removed

And of course, another update is that WSJ (later separate report from AFP also) has quoted a few anonymous Pakistani investigation officials to confirm that LeT leader Zarar Shah has confessed his role in Mumbai attack. Let’s wait till we get another flip-flop from Pakistan.

Meanwhile I read an editorial in a Pakistan newspaper to summerize why Pakistan is running soft on LeT but cracks the other terror groups hard. It was anyway an open secret, but it’s nice to see it on a Pakistani newspaper.

“And this takes me back to Pervez Musharraf’s first visit to the US after his coup. At a meeting with a group of journalists among whom I was present, my dear and much lamented friend Tahir Mirza, then the Dawn correspondent, asked Musharraf why he was not acting against Lashkar-e Tayba and Jaish-e Muhammad. Musharraf went red in the face and shot back, “They are not doing anything in Pakistan. They are doing jihad outside.””

What more could be said on this topic?

Update

Pakistan Dawn has written a nice report on FBI investigation in Pakistan. It’s interesting to know that Pakistan Govt claim that they don’t at all know about FBI’s plan to visit Pakistan and Faridkot. Pakistan however claimed that FBI is yet to get any “credible evidences” against Pakistan link. Similarly, Indians claims the opposite.

“Unnamed Pakistani and Indian officials have been giving contradictory versions of FBI’s investigations into the Mumbai attacks.
While Pakistani officials say the FBI did not find any evidence of Pakistan’s involvement in the attacks, the Indians insist that it did. US officials, on the other hand, have remained silent on this issue.”

I am sure that FBI will not comment anything before they consult their new Government. I am eqally sure that either of India and Pakistan Government is going to reject the findings of FBI. And of course, there is nothing left to prove that the lone captured terrorist is a Pakistani.

Mumbai Conspiracies Once more

I visit a lot of websites and of late I am seeing a spurt in the number of Conspiracy theories. This coincides with the official position of Pakistan to reject that  Ajmal Kasav to  be a Pakistani.

Interestingly, none of these conspiracy theorists talk about the Geo news clips and the Dawn editorial, nor they try to explain those in the lights of their own theories.

To reiterate, I must once again point out that there are FOUR INDEPENDENT resources those talk about Ajmal Kasav to be from Pakistan. None of them are actually contested by some alternatives. Till the phone call intercepts are available to the public, we have all four of them and they don’t seem to fit with any of the current conspiracy theories.I wrote in my earlier blog -

“There are four independent sources claim and verify the origin of Kasav to Faridkot village in Pakistan. The first one is the Indian agencies interrogating him, the first verification came from The Observer’s Saeed Shah, then came the Dawn’ editorial on 12th December that claimed to talk to his father and last but not the least, the Geo News ’sting operation’ on secret camera where the villagers of Faridkot are shown to accept the origin of Kasav to their own village. All four resources establish that Kasav is from Pakistan, with a very high probability.”

Now, if one fabricates a conspiracy theory he needs to rather come up with a document or proof on their theories. Why do they insist on gaps of the existing proofs and evidences to establish their claim? Aren’t gaps applicable to all the possibilities with equal probability? Why are no alternative stories being published with documents?

And also, what would have happened if there were no terrorists being caught?

One stop place for conspiracy theories

Update

One good article by Tanvir Jafri (Famous Indian Columnist) ends like this -

“But now Aamir qasab, the father of arrested terrorist, who is a citizen of Pakistan has admitted that Ajmal Kasab is his son. Now what more proof do they demand?“

He also exposes one big lie (that I didn’t know)

“The columnist of Pakistan studied the photo minutely that there is a thick thread tied on the right wrist of Ajmal. The writer put the argument that such type of threads is tied by the Hindu community. So Ajmal may be the terrorist having connection with Hindu community. Now what can be the answer to this Pak journalist if the father of the terrorist is confessing that Ajmal is his son? The second fact is that even in Pakistan same Muslim faqirs, managing the shrines in Pakistan, tie these threads. This is done in the Muslim community also. The Pak media should tell the truth and justice and not “to rob peter to pay Paul”.“

Thanks to Tanvir Jafri, one more “conspiracy” is “exposed”.

Pakistan Armyman Arrested in India : The Damage Control

The case that Kasav was indeed from Pakistan has been strengthened today by Indian Police forces when they captured three Pakistani residents one of whom happened to be a member of Pakistan Army. The saga continues. Pakistan Army has already denied that their person was involved. But the New York Times notes :

But a Pakistani military official, speaking on condition that he not be named, appeared to confirm that at least one of the suspects was Pakistani, saying the man identified as a soldier had in fact deserted his Pakistani unit in June 2006.

On his line, the J&K Police Chief notes :

“One of the three has been identified as Ghulam Farid alias Gulshan Kumar, a sepoy (foot soldier) in 10 Azad Kashmir regiment of Pakistan Army. His service number is 4319184,”

The motive of them is clear. They are doing the damage control job. The Mumbai massacre did one bad thing in particular – shifted the media interest from Kashmir. All the terrorist activities in Pakistan are basically because of Kashmir issue with India – this argument was weakened. An attack similar to the one in Mumbai, if launched in Jammu and Kashmir, would definitely shift the focus back to Kashmir and do increase Pakistan’s lost sympathy in International media. There would have been a lot of critical essays on Kashmir and those would have undermined the Indian claim that the terrorists in Pakistan would attack India even if Kashmir issue is resolved.

However, thanks to Police forces, this didn’t happen.

Mumbai Attack : Questions and Conspiracy Theories

[See my latest on this if you want to avoid long post.]

I came across a lot of conspiracy theories so far on 26/11 Mumbai attacks. Of late, they are less in number, perhaps after the Geo News exposed the village of Ajmal Amir Kasav. Also, perhaps, because a terrorist is captured by Indian Police this time. I am sure that an absence of these two events would have doubled the number of conspiracy theories.

The way conspiracy theories work is very simple. It blames a strong-enough force to conspire and cause the attack. The favorite of all theorists is the state of USA or CIA (US Intelligence agency) to be precise. However, in these days, a lot of perceived allies of USA are also coming on top of the hit-list – such as India (RAW) and Israel (MOSSAD). In other areas, a powerful state-nation is sufficient to blame. My first encounter with the Conspiracy Theory was with Moon landing of Apollo-11. I believed the theory for at least 5 years. The next one was when Rajiv Gandhi dies. The most powerful one was 9/11 Conspiracy Theories. I believed and rejected them from time to time.

Next, it points out a few ‘gap’s in the present way of investigation. It looks for errors and fallacies in the claims made by the investigating agencies. Most of the time, the gaps are sufficient for them to ‘disprove’ the official version and prepare their own. It also emphasizes on a few motives of the conspiracy actors and their perceived gains.

Conspiracy theories are in a sense the denial measure of the fools. It denies a few basic facts -

1. Every evidence can be fabricated.
2. Every proof has a certain probability or circumstantial evidences has a probabilistic role to establish the truth.
3. Gaps doesn’t strengthen an alternative story.
4. Most of the time, a full length alternative story is also not presented, denying any of its critics an opportunity to hit back.
5. Any human description of an incident is bound to have some errors.
6. Investigation can never answer all queries – because, investigators has limited resources and limited time.

The basic aim of a conspiracy theory is to exploit the lack of knowledge and the tendency of human being to believe what they want to believe. The conspiracy theories try to fit into perception of people. That is why different version of conspiracy theories gain popularity among different groups.

Now, let me move my focus into the current set of questions/theories on Mumbai attack. I have collected a set of “Questions” on the Mumbai attack. The first source is from Rediff, the second one is from a personal blog, the third and fourth ones are from countercurrent website. Of course, Iranian president has something different to offer. He blames it entirely on USA and says that USA has plans to attack India and China.

Before I deal with the questions, let me summarize the proofs those have already surfaced.  The first and foremost is the origin of the lone captured terrorist – Ajmal Amir Kasav. There are four independent sources claim and verify the origin of Kasav to Faridkot village in Pakistan. The first one is the Indian agencies interrogating him, the first verification came from The Observer’s Saeed Shah, then came the Dawn’ editorial on 12th December that claimed to talk to his father and last but not the least, the Geo News ‘sting operation’ on secret camera where the villagers of Faridkot are shown to accept the origin of Kasav to their own village. All four resources establish that Kasav is from Pakistan, with a very high probability. Apart from this, phone call intercepts to Karachi are also been presented to Pakistan. I believe a satellite phone and a GPS has also been recovered from these terrorists. Those also point to the same origin. Apart form India, US (FBI) has also completed the probe for the case and indicated link to LeT in Pakistan. However, no evidences are yet entered in Interpol’s database.

The only conspiracy theory that could probably stand against it was from C.M. Farooqi, who claimed that Kasav was arrested by Indian agency in Nepal two years back. I am yet to see any documents from the person that he indeed knew Ajmal Kasav. Neither does this fit with the Geo News and Observer’s report that Kasav went back to his village within last 6 months.

Once this is accepted as a truth, the probability of homegrown terrorists to take part in the attack becomes thin. However, existence of a few sleeper cells passing on signals and information are not yet ruled out.

The conspiracy theory those are circulated in Pakistan (and in India also) are basically focusing on motive and gains of different parties. They also try to use a few myths in that. Let me go through a few gain-myth.

1. The gainers – USA and Israel – because India will become an ally of them after this operation.

Myth – India is already an ally of USA and Israel in a sense they provide India with military know-how at a lower cost. However, Indian votes, unlike those in USA, are not governed by Indian foreign policy. So, Indian voters ignore who’s India’s friend and how Indian Govt is dealing with them. Apart from that, not top 10% of Indian population knows about Israel, neither that affects their vote pattern.

2. BJP and other right wing parties will gain from it.

A terror strike from outside the country does not suggest home-grown terror or a need for anti-Terror law. So, why the right-wing will gain is still a mystery to me. As expected, votes in a couple of states have gone to Congress. All surveys pointed out the votes were cast mostly on domestic issues. Over and over, it has been proven that Indian public voted for Bijli(Electricity)-Sadak(Roads)-Pani(water).

3. The death of Karkare and others would stall the progress of Malegaon blast investigation

The blast investigation is mostly done by officers in charge and not by the chief of staff. The chief is the person to make decisions and talk to high level leaders and press. So, I don’t personally think it’s going to stop anything from happening. However, the arrests may get delayed.

4. Arrest of a high level BJP Personnel was avoided because of Karkare’s death

Had there been an arrest of a senior BJP personnel, they would have gained out of it. It’s because getting arrested always boost the theory of conspiracy against them. Most of the time, that can be used against the opposition to gain popularity.

5. Indian Muslims will be looser

Till now, there are no signs of this. The anti-terror law is often misused against them, but I am doubtful whether it will be the same this time. Muslims in India protested the attack with zeal and media has projected that story very well. So, I don’t see any chances of backlash against them. After all, we should not believe in the two Nation theory.

From the motives, let me take a loot at a few ‘gap’s. One of the major gaps is the number of terrorists. My take on that is the number can never be ascertained. Neither the Investigating agency nor the terrorist himself can unambiguously tell us how many terrorists were actually involved. The fishermen saw 10 men and we got 9 corpses and one captured terrorist.

The next one is about the identity of the person. There are claims that there were a blond fair person (BBC), and also some Marathi newspaper published that one of the attackers was fluent in Marathi. These contradict the official version of the story that tells us about the Urdu speaking Ismail and Ajmal being the two who roamed around the Cafe and Cama hospital.  To discuss this, we should not forget that many of the newspaper reports, especially the local reports, are indeed rumors only. I have seen this so many times so far. The story that has been published by the Marathi newspaper is about an employee in Cama Hospital, who begged his life from the terrorists. It won’t be difficult either for media or for the Investigating agencies to get hold of this person, if the incident reported is not a rumor. About the “blond, fair” terrorist, I should say that the eye-witness most probably misidentified them. There were many foreigners present in the Cafe. Moreover, there is a personal bias to derive judgments from observations. I saw one video where the Israeli eye-witness claimed that the terrorists did not look Islamic because they were cleanly shaven. By now, we all know that all of them were in deed dressed in Western clothes and were cleanly shaved.

The last but not the least, the Hemant Karkare incident. I don’t find any difficulty in accepting the version from the surviving Constable Arun Jadav.He was accompanying the Police officers.

This, along with Kasav’s own statement, should be sufficient evidence to attribute Karkare’s death to Ismail, the terrorist accompanying Kasav. Another important evidence could be the postmortem report, which should confirm the bullet injury of Mr Karkare was indeed from Ismail’s AK-47. However, I did see a lot of questions still being raised on Karkare’s sitting location (Isn’t it silly?). I don’t think we can unearth the thoughts and plans from a corpse. So, these are the questions those are bound to be unanswered.

The full sequence of events were put together by Al-Jazeera.

One very good explanation of this conspiracy theory are given in a couple of blogs. (First and Second)

I would like to expand this article as soon as I get more and more ‘question’s to answer.

Update 1

Thanks to Mr Munsi, I have got the transcript of interview with Alex Jones and Hamid Gul, two great conspiracy theorist of our time. Their thory also maintains the weak points of mainstream conspiracy theorists. I discussed those common weak points at my blog. As usual they stressed on the “gap”s and never talked about the evidences that were actually found. Hamid Gul says on 9/11 attacks -

“And there is no mention of the second aircraft, and so there are a number of things which remain unanswered.”

There are no surprises in the whole talk. They did never even try to introduce any eye-witness or evidences – it’s purely a story-telling affair.

Another countercurrents conspiracy theory expert Shamshur Rab Khan trying to fit Malegaon Blast probe with Mr Karkare’s killing from an unique angle – “After all, what is wrong in knowing the hidden bullets that killed Karkare.” I again raise the same question – is he willing to believe the report if the investigation indicates Karkare’s death was caused by Ismail’s bullet?

Nawaz Sharif’s stance may cost him his life

Nawaz Sharif has declared that he is sure that Kasav (the lone survived terrorist in Mumbai attack) is from Pakistan. He also slammed the Pakistan Govt. for not making it open to public.

The Govt of Pakistan remarked that the timing of Sharif’s comment is unfortunate. I don’t really understand whether the remark is acceptance of truth or something else. Interestingly, Govt did not slammed Sharif accusing him for making up facts.

As an outcome of this whole incident, Nawaz Sharif has become blacklisted (or redlisted) in the books of terrorists, who earlier has killed Benazir Bhutto for a similar stance. I bet Sharif won’t get an increase of vote in his favor due to his comments, but certainly gain an edge with the relationship with India and USA if he somehow manages to come to power. Whether he loses his valuable life by that time, is what remains to be seen.

Update : To mitigate the life threat, Sharif did a U-turn

Pakistan News Channel : Kasav is from Pakistan

To see details of the proofs, one can visit my latest post.

And after that, Zardari has softens a bit but still there are no official confessions from Pakistan Govt. Instead, they are asking for ‘proof’ only to deny them. The purpose of getting the proofs from Pakistan was only to remove them quickly. At least the subsequent video from Geo TV shows that.

A support from a Pakistani Newspaper Editorial.

New Delhi has its own reasons for refusing to share evidence, fearing its sources would be compromised. New Delhi also claims that it provided sufficient information about the bombing of its embassy in Kabul earlier this year, but Pakistan failed to respond.

Also, I have written on the conspiracy theories around this.