According to the Associated Press, the surviving gunman, Ajmal Amir Kasab – who is 21 - told interrogators he had been sent by the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Tayiba and identified two of the plot's masterminds.
Senior government officials familiar with the enquiry say that Kasab told police that one of the handlers, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi – who is Lashkar's operations chief - recruited him for the attack, and the assailants called another senior leader, Yusuf Muzammil, on a satellite phone after hijacking an Indian vessel en route to Mumbai.
The information led investigators to more closely scrutinize another Lashkar operative, Faheem Ansari.
Ansari, an Indian national, was arrested in February in north India carrying hand-drawn sketches of hotels, the train terminal and other sites that were later attacked in Mumbai, Amitabh Yash, director of the Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh police, said Thursday.
During his interrogation, Ansari also named Muzammil as his handler in Pakistan, adding that he trained in a Lashkar camp in Muzaffarabad - the same area where Kasab said he was trained, a senior police officer involved in the investigation said.
Ansari told police about a planned Lashkar attack on Mumbai, providing eight or nine specific locations to be targeted, Yash said, adding that Ansari had detailed sketches of the sites as well as escape routes.
Ansari said during interrogations that he carried out reconnaissance in the fall of 2007 of different Mumbai locations, including the US Consulate, the stock exchange and other sites that weren't attacked, Yash said. Ansari also confessed to arranging a safe house in Mumbai.
Authorities were working to determine whether Ansari, who is in Indian custody, helped the attackers acquire ‘such intricate knowledge of the sites,’ said Rakesh Maria, a senior Mumbai police official
Ansari linked up with Lashkar while working at a printing press in Dubai. He was taken by sea to Pakistan to the Lashkar camp in Muzaffarabad and received a false Pakistani passport and citizenship papers, Yash said.
After traveling to Nepal last year, Ansari crossed back into India and settled in Mumbai, Yash said.
He was arrested Feb. 10 in the northern city of Rampur after suspected Muslim militants attacked a police camp, killing eight constables. He said he was there to collect weapons to bring to Mumbai for a future attack.
Yash said Ansari's arrest did not derail Lashkar's plans for an attack. ‘When they found that their mole in Bombay had been caught ... they carried out the operations in a different way,’ he said.
Meanwhile, police officers said they were trying to get as much detail as possible from Kasab. ‘A terrorist of this sort is never cooperative. We have to extract information,’ said Deven Bharti, the head of the Mumbai crime branch.
Senior government officials familiar with the enquiry say that Kasab told police that one of the handlers, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi – who is Lashkar's operations chief - recruited him for the attack, and the assailants called another senior leader, Yusuf Muzammil, on a satellite phone after hijacking an Indian vessel en route to Mumbai.
The information led investigators to more closely scrutinize another Lashkar operative, Faheem Ansari.
Ansari, an Indian national, was arrested in February in north India carrying hand-drawn sketches of hotels, the train terminal and other sites that were later attacked in Mumbai, Amitabh Yash, director of the Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh police, said Thursday.
During his interrogation, Ansari also named Muzammil as his handler in Pakistan, adding that he trained in a Lashkar camp in Muzaffarabad - the same area where Kasab said he was trained, a senior police officer involved in the investigation said.
Ansari told police about a planned Lashkar attack on Mumbai, providing eight or nine specific locations to be targeted, Yash said, adding that Ansari had detailed sketches of the sites as well as escape routes.
Ansari said during interrogations that he carried out reconnaissance in the fall of 2007 of different Mumbai locations, including the US Consulate, the stock exchange and other sites that weren't attacked, Yash said. Ansari also confessed to arranging a safe house in Mumbai.
Authorities were working to determine whether Ansari, who is in Indian custody, helped the attackers acquire ‘such intricate knowledge of the sites,’ said Rakesh Maria, a senior Mumbai police official
Ansari linked up with Lashkar while working at a printing press in Dubai. He was taken by sea to Pakistan to the Lashkar camp in Muzaffarabad and received a false Pakistani passport and citizenship papers, Yash said.
After traveling to Nepal last year, Ansari crossed back into India and settled in Mumbai, Yash said.
He was arrested Feb. 10 in the northern city of Rampur after suspected Muslim militants attacked a police camp, killing eight constables. He said he was there to collect weapons to bring to Mumbai for a future attack.
Yash said Ansari's arrest did not derail Lashkar's plans for an attack. ‘When they found that their mole in Bombay had been caught ... they carried out the operations in a different way,’ he said.
Meanwhile, police officers said they were trying to get as much detail as possible from Kasab. ‘A terrorist of this sort is never cooperative. We have to extract information,’ said Deven Bharti, the head of the Mumbai crime branch.
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