Mumbai Attacker Admits Guilt
Excerpt:
He has complained about the stench in the cell where he is kept apart from the general jail population.
Mr. Kazmi said the flush for the toilet in Mr. Kasab’s cell was not working. He had earlier asked for a inexpensive perfume, an Urdu language newspaper and the permission to walk on the veranda outside his cell.
Flunking the Intelligence Test
Excerpts:
The hostage takers in Mumbai didn't need to wonder how large an armed rescue team the Indian government was sending, or when to anticipate its arrival. They had only to click on the nearest TV set, and there was the federal home minister, Shivraj Patil, obliviously telling viewers that 200 commandos had taken off on the two-hour flight from New Delhi at 2:30 a.m.
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About an hour before the shooting started, villagers on the shore in South Mumbai saw a group of 10 young strangers climbing out of an inflatable raft. The incident was reported to local police, who did nothing.
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[at an attacked hospital]: The state's antiterrorism chief and two other top police officials arrived at the scene with a posse of cops who were armed with antiquated .303 rifles. Seemingly unaware of any danger, the three men stood unprotected on the firing line, where they were quickly mowed down by sudden bursts of automatic gunfire.
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Horrified police officers in Mumbai saw their vehicles hijacked by terrorists who showed intimate knowledge of the city's streets and the layouts of the huge hotels they captured. In contrast, the police displayed no familiarity with the layouts of those buildings. The commandos who flew in from New Delhi had to waste precious time getting hotel staff members to sketch out the layouts of their workplaces.
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Today MAC [Multi-Agency Center] consists of a tiny staff using a bare-bones computer system with no real-time links to state police or other intelligence sources.
Comment: NSG = National Security Guard
Why did NSG take 9 hrs to get there?
Excerpt:
By the time they start their operation, it is 7am — in other words, nine-and-a-half hours after the terror strike.
Many lives might have been saved had this delay not happened. The obvious question is why is the NSG stationed only in Delhi. When Indian cities are vulnerable to terror attacks, why is there no commando force like the NSG, or its units, in every city?
- 9:30 p.m. Wednesday: The terrorists strike Mumbai. Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh is in Kerala. He is briefed about the attack. By the time he grasps the enormity of the situation, 90 minutes have gone by.
- 11 p.m.: Mr. Deshmukh calls Home Minister Shivraj Patil - who has now resigned from his post - and asks for NSG commandos. “How many men?” Patil asks. “200,” Mr. Deshmukh says. Mr. Patil calls NSG chief J.K. Dutt and tells him to send 200 battle-ready commandos to Mumbai.
- 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. Thursday: Most of the NSG men have to be roused from sleep. They don their uniforms, strap on safety gear and collect ammo and firearms. It is discovered that the plane that can take 200 men, the IL 76, is not in Delhi but Chandigarh. Someone wakes up the IL 76 pilot, the plane refueled. It finally arrives in Delhi.
- 5 a.m. The commandos land at Mumbai airport. By the time they board the waiting buses, it is 5:25 a.m.
- 6 a.m. The buses reach the designated place in south Mumbai where the commandos are briefed, divided into different groups and sent out on their mission.
- 7 a.m. They start their operation about nine-and-a-half hours after the terror strike.
Patrick Cockburn: Pakistan is the root of the problem
Excerpt:
It is self-defeating hypocrisy for the West to lecture the Indian government now about not over-reacting and not automatically blaming the Pakistani government or some part of its security apparatus for Mumbai. The way in which the Pakistani military has allowed Kashmiri and Pakistani militants free range in Pakistan created the milieu from which the attacks this week came. It may be that the monster the ISI created is no long under its control, but it is ultimately responsible for what has happened.
The real political background to Mumbai is succinctly summed up by Ahmed Rashid in his excellent book Descent into Chaos: How the War against Islamic Extremism Is Being Lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. In Pakistan, he writes, "a nuclear-armed military and an intelligence service that have sponsored Islamic extremism as an intrinsic part of their foreign policy for nearly four decades have found it extremely difficult to give up their self-destructive and double-dealing policies".
Mumbai photographer: I wish I'd had a gun, not a camera. Armed police would not fire back
Excerpts:
The gunmen were terrifyingly professional, making sure at least one of them was able to fire their rifle while the other reloaded. By the time he managed to capture the killer on camera, Mr D'Souza had already seen two gunmen calmly stroll across the station concourse shooting both civilians and policemen, many of whom, he said, were armed but did not fire back. "I first saw the gunmen outside the station," Mr D'Souza said. "With their rucksacks and Western clothes they looked like backpackers, not terrorists, but they were very heavily armed and clearly knew how to use their rifles.
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[there] were the masses of armed police hiding in the area who simply refused to shoot back. "There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything," he said. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back."
As the gunmen fired at policemen taking cover across the street, Mr D'Souza realised a train was pulling into the station unaware of the horror within. "I couldn't believe it. We rushed to the platform and told everyone to head towards the back of the station. Those who were older and couldn't run, we told them to stay put."
The militants returned inside the station and headed towards a rear exit towards Chowpatty Beach. Mr D'Souza added: "I told some policemen the gunmen had moved towards the rear of the station but they refused to follow them. What is the point if having policemen with guns if they refuse to use them? I only wish I had a gun rather than a camera."
