Late in the summer of 2008, when 26/11 was still just a string of digits, a small group of earnest young men had gathered in a Delhi apartment, admiring the worn, matt finish on a Kalashnikov—the first of many that were due to arrive. The men had carried out a series of murderous urban bombings; now, they hoped to stage a mass-casualty fidayeen attack. They even thought of names for their new group: the Martyr al-Zarqawi Brigade, named after a jihadist commander killed in Iraq.
Not many weeks after that conversation, the man who had brought in the Kalashnikov, Muhammad Atif Amin, was shot dead by the Delhi Police at Delhi’s Batla House, along with his Indian Mujahideen associate Muhammad Sajid. Muhammad Shahnawaz and Ariz Khan, the two other volunteers, have never been seen since.
Five years after fugitive Indian Mujahideen commander Riyaz Ismail Shahbandri slipped across the border from Bihar’s Darbhanga, investigators are learning the plan didn’t die. In Karachi, the Indian Mujahideen has become more tightly-knit and better-trained than in the past. Its plans include staging 26/11-style fidayeen attacks, more lethal in impact than its bombings so far.
Highly-placed sources involved in questioning jihadist Muhammad Ahmad Zarar Siddibapa have told INN what they’ve learned so far bears out their worst fears. Ever since 2008, the links between the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Indian Mujahideen leadership have been snapped—but Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence has taken direct control of the network. It’s involved itself in organising training and funding.
In training camps run by the ISI, new operatives have learned assault and tactical skills of a sophistication the Indian Mujahideen never previously possessed. ISI officers, investigators claim Siddibapa—also known as Yasin Bhatkal and Imran—has told them, are also trying to get key Indian jihadist leaders—among them Hyderabad’s Farhatullah Ghauri, recently charged with financing the setting up of a new jihadist cell in Hubli, to Dawood Ibrahim’s key Gujarat ganglord Rasool Khan ‘Party’—to work under one, single umbrella.
He’d called it The Karachi Project—and now there’s more reason than ever before to believe it wasn’t a fantasy. In June, 2009, when 26/11 reconnaissance operative David Headley spoke to India’s National Investigations Agency in a maximum-security interrogation room in Chicago, he knew only the barest details of the operation. “The aim of the Karachi setup”, Headley had said, “is to launch operations into India by using militants of Indian origin”.
The man in charge of the operation, Headley said, was his own controller, a man called Abdul Rehman Hashim. Hashim, in turn, reported to an Inter-Services Intelligence officer, known to Headley only as “Colonel Shah”. This was different from a separate Lashkar-e-Taiba plan to use Indian jihadists, run by Sajid Mir. It’s the Karachi Project that has now flowered in Pakistan.
The Lashkar project, investigators say they’ve learned from Siddibapa, has been shut down—and Riyaz Shahbandri now commands the entire Indian jihadist network. He’s got strings tied to him, though, and there are men who pull it. Siddibapa says he doesn’t know who those men are, but some details are available from other sources. Hashim, Headley’s handler, served with the 6 Baloch regiment; so, before him, did his father. and though he was once demoted to captain for refusing to fight against Osama bin-Laden’s jihadists, he mysteriously received his rank again.
Even though he’s wanted in the United States for 26/11, and a planned attack in Denmark, Hashim has never been arrested. Indian records list him living in his home near the Jinnah Hospital campus, off Lahore’s Canal Bank Road. There’s a reason why some people in Pakistan end up charged with serious crimes in countries overseas, commit offences that invite a court-martial, and yet never get questioned, let alone punished. It has three letters—and there are no prizes for guessing what they are.
Every few weeks since January, 2009, Siddibapa spoke to Shahbandri using voice-over-internet-protocol lines and encrypted chat applications. Though he didn’t travel to Pakistan after 2006, he received instructions on where to pick up funds, routed through hawala dealers also handling remittances from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Forensic experts are now working to recover data from Siddibapa’s laptop, but say it will most likely provide a mass of detail on the organisation’s finances and communications strategies. In the wake of the Batla House shootout, prosecutors have alleged in a still-unfolding trial, Riyaz Shahbandri and other key Indian Mujahideen members stayed at Delhi resident Gauhar Kirmani’s home in Shaheen Bagh.
The group discussed how best to rebuild the group. Later, in December, 2008, Shahbandri relocated to Darbhanga—awaiting instructions on who to contact in Pokhara, for a fake passport and tickets that would allow him to Pakistan. He left the next month, along with Siddibapa—but then sent his lieutenant back to manage the network.
For the next three years, police allege, Siddibapa relocated himself at Indian Mujahideen sympathiser Irshad Khan’s home at Shaheen Bagh, in Delhi’s Okhla suburb. He set up a chemicals factory, which served as cover for Indian Mujahideen bomb-production. He married Khan’s daughter—who continues to live in New Delhi, her life destroyed by the revelation of her husband’s secret life as a terrorist. Siddibapa personally travelled, prosecutors in multiple states have alleged, to Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad to supervise attacks.
Though Siddibapa narrowly escaped arrest more than once—in Kolkata, where he passed himself off as a minor criminal, involved in currency racketeering, and received bail; later, in New Delhi, after his arms-factory was discovered—his networks kept running. In recent months, investigation sources say, Riyaz Bhatkal had just one message for his lieutenant: to step up the tempo of violence. Indian intelligence officials have been warning of such an escalation for months, and some experts argue the ISI hopes to step up pressure on India as the United States leaves the region in 2014.
There’s evidence from Siddibapa questioning, too, of stepped-up training. Asadullah Akhtar ‘Haddi’, arrested along with his leader, is alleged by investigators to have said he trained with Pakistan army officers, at an exclusively-run facility, learning advanced combat skills. Siddibapa, investigation sources say, also mentioned that at least one Indian Mujahideen group had made contact with jihadists fighting in Afghanistan, through connections in the Pakistani Taliban—though he claims to be unaware of who exactly went for combat training, and when. Implausible these claim aren’t.
Earlier this year, arrested Indian Mujahideen operative Muhammad Danish Ansari made a confession before a Delhi court, saying Siddibapa had wanted to stage a fidayeen attack on foreign nationals.
Last year, the Delhi Police alleged five men held in connection with an Indian Mujahideen bombing in Pune were planning fidayeen attacks on Buddhist shrines. Back in 2006, when funds raised from ganglord Rasool Khan had helped Siddibapa and others make their way to Pakistan, they trained at Lashkar-e-Taiba camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir—learning basic tradecraft.
Atif Amin was the first Indian Mujahideen operative to have learned to fight—but the cases suggest many more have since acquired the skills they need to take the Indian Mujahideen to a new level of lethality. Siddibapa’s arrest is a major breakthrough for Indian investigators. It’s also a warning that the worst could still be ahead.
