New Delhi, January 11
Explosive information has come to light for the first time that militant outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba is running camps in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for spotting, recruiting and training terrorists with covert support from Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).
Top sources in the Ministry of Home Affairs here disclosed to The Tribune tonight that the Indian intelligence agencies like the Research and
Analysis Wing (RAW) and Intelligence Bureau (IB) had stumbled upon this information about four months ago with the arrest of a LeT terrorist on August 28 last who was a part of the outfit’s Kuwait cell.
That the August 28 arrest of Shaheed Ahmed Bakshi from Delhi was not a case in isolation and was in fact a pointer to a larger, more sinister trend was proven and corroborated with the arrest of another LeT ultra, Imran Hussain and his deportation from Saudi Arabia on January 8.
Hussain was brought from Riyadh to Mumbai by a special plane. He was spotted in Riyadh and arrested by the local police on a specific tip off given by the Indian intelligence agencies.
Sources disclosed that Hussain had told his interrogators that the task assigned to the Saudi Arabia cell of LeT was to train the cadres in making and planting Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) mainly to target VVIPs.
Significantly, Hussain was in close touch with another hardcore terrorist, also named Imran, who was wanted in the Coimbatore blasts and subsequent conspiracies also to assassinate Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani.
Imran Hussain was also the kingpin of the December 2, 2002 Ghatkopar blast near Mumbai in which eight person were killed. The main motive of the Ghatkopar mission was to avenge the killings of Muslims in Gujarat by indiscriminate killings of Hindus.
The Imran Hussain case has come up close on the heels of Shaheed Ahmed Bakshi’s arrest in Delhi on August 28. From Bakshi’s premises, 4 kg of RDX, bomb grade material, pistols and ammunition were also recovered.
In both cases, the modus operandi used by LeT and the ISI is similar. Their “talent-spotters” spot Indians who go to these countries in search of a job, give them the much-needed money and rope them into LeT in the name of “jehad”, sources said.
