Union home secretary G.K. Pillai on Tuesday said the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack was controlled by Pakistan’s ISI and that the latest disclosures, if any, by Pakistani LeT terrorist Tahawwur Hussain Rana in a Chicago court are only a confirmation of that view.
“We have not got any official communication on the court proceedings in the US court so far. If it is true, then it is only a confirmation of what we have held so far about Pakistan’s ISI role in controlling the 26/11 attack,” Mr Pillai told this newspaper.
The disclosure, however, reinforces New Delhi’s view that the ISI was involved in the attacks. On the eve of the July 15, 2010 talks between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan in Islamabad, Mr Pillai had said the ISI had a much more significant role to play than was earlier thought. It was not just a peripheral role. They (ISI) were literally controlling and coordinating [the attacks] from the beginning till the end, Mr Pillai had said. The home secretary’s remarks had created a stir and had not gone down well with the Pakistani establishment.
According to fresh court documents that surfaced ahead of his upcoming trial in Chicago in May, Rana has said his acts of providing material support to terrorists in the Mumbai attacks, as alleged by US prosecutors, “were done at the behest of the Pakistani government and the ISI, not the Lashkar terrorist organisation”. The documents also cite Rana invoking his friend David Headley’s grand jury testimony in which the latter, too, implicates ISI.
“This confirms our suspicion that there is a close nexus between the ISI and LeT. The LeT operatives were closely in touch with the ISI which was coordinating the 26/11 attack at every step,” government sources said. The sources regretted Islamabad’s slow response towards New Delhi repeatedly asking it to dismantle the terror infrastructure on its soil.
Notably, Pakistan-American LeT terrorist David Coleman Headley, alias Daood Gilani, had confessed to Indian investigators in 2010 that he used to “separately brief his ISI handler (Major Iqbal) after each reconnaissance visit to Mumbai”. He had also said the ISI was fully involved in 26/11 and had even paid Rs 25 lakhs to purchase the first boat. In his confession to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), Headley has named ISI officers Major Iqbal, Major Sameer Ali, Col Shah, Lt. Col. Hamza and one Brig. Rijaz, based in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
Rana’s trial is to begin May 16. The 49-year old Canadian citizen of Pakistani-origin is accused of helping Headley set up an office in Mumbai to provide the cover for Headley’s visits to India to identify possible targets. The court documents published by the Globe and Mail quote Headley as testifying before the grand jury (which determines whether there is enough evidence for a trial) that he had told Rana that he (Headley) had been asked to perform espionage work for ISI.
Rana cited this information in his defence to claim that his alleged illegal acts of providing material support to the 26/11 terrorists were done at the behest of the Pakistani government and the ISI, not the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. Rana argued that he is entitled to a public authority defence because he acted under authority, whether actual or apparent, of the Pakistani government and the ISI. In other words, he knowingly committed a criminal act but did so on the basis of official instructions to engage in the illegal activity. The judge, in his April 1 ruling, rejected Rana’s plea and granted the governments motion in limine to exclude defendant from presenting a public authority defence. A motion in limine is a motion before the start of a trial to request the judge to rule that certain evidence may or may not be introduced to the jury in the trial.