India says ISI oversaw Mumbai attacks

NEW DEHLI: India has accused Pakistani intelligence services of overseeing the 2008 militant attacks on Mumbai, a report said on Wednesday ahead of a meeting between foreign ministers of the two neighbouring countries.

Home Secretary G K Pillai told the Indian Express newspaper that the level of involvement of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had become clear through recent questioning of David Headley, a suspect under arrest in the United States.

“The real sense that has come out from Headley’s interrogation is that the ISI has had a much more significant role to play (than was earlier thought),” Pillai said.

“It was not just a peripheral role. They (the ISI) were literally controlling and coordinating it from the beginning till the end,” he said.

Headley, the US-born son of a former Pakistani diplomat, was arrested in Chicago last year and has pleaded guilty to scouting the hotels and other sites in Mumbai that were targeted by the militants.

Pakistan has put the alleged masterminds of the bloody attacks, in which 166 people died, on trial but has always strenuously denied that its intelligence services were involved.

During the Mumbai attacks, 10 gunmen went on a 60-hour rampage in India’s financial capital. The one surviving gunman has been sentenced to death by a Mumbai court. New Delhi and Washington accuse the outlawed militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba of being responsible.

A Pakistani court has charged seven people in connection with the attacks, including alleged mastermind Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, but the process has moved slowly amid requests for further evidence from the Indian authorities. Indian Prime Minister Singh had previously gone on record as saying that the Mumbai attacks had the support of “some official agencies” in Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 15th, 2010.