More links between Mumbai terrorist and Pakistan

NY Times:

The Mumbai police on Thursday identified a second Pakistani terrorist as an engineer of the bloody assaults on the city last week and confirmed that they were investigating whether a Mumbai man arrested on terrorism charges had scoped out some of the high-profile targets the attackers struck, leaving more than 170 dead.

Gruesome new evidence also emerged Thursday suggesting that some of the six people killed at the Jewish center in Mumbai had been treated savagely. Some of the bodies appeared to have strangulation marks and wounds on their bodies did not come from gunshots or grenades, the police said.

The new links to Pakistan added fresh complications to American diplomatic efforts to secure cooperation between India and Pakistan, which has questioned some of the evidence that Pakistanis were involved. On Thursday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met in Islamabad with Pakistani leaders, a day after meeting with Indian leaders, to urge that the two countries work together to find the attackers and bring them to justice.

“What I heard was a commitment that this is the course that will be taken,” Ms. Rice told reporters at Chaklala Air Base after meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.

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In Mumbai, Rakesh Maria, India’s joint commissioner of police, said that the second Lashkar-e-Taiba military commander who helped engineer the attacks was Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi. Mr. Maria said that the surviving attacker, 21-year-old Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, identified Mr. Lakhvi and said he helped indoctrinate all the attackers.

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Another police official, Deven Bharti, said the interrogation of Mr. Kasab, the captured gunman, was focusing on three lines of inquiry: the identities of the other nine; their training and planning; and whether they had local accomplices.

The suspected collaborator, Faheem Ahmed Ansari, was arrested on Feb. 10 in Rampur in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh a in connection with gun and grenade attack on New Year’s Eve on a police camp. He was arrested with two others; all three are suspected members of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Mr. Ansari told police interrogators in Uttar Pradesh that from fall 2007 to February 2008, he had been in Mumbai scoping out possible targets for the guerrilla group, including the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the old Victoria rail station.

The Uttar Pradesh police said that Mr. Ansari was arrested after he returned to Rampur to pick up weapons left behind from the New Year’s Eve attack and take them to Mumbai for use in a later operation.

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The depth of Pakistan's commitment to rooting out the terrorist will soon be tested. India has been able to provide specific names of individuals believed responsible for the attacks. One thing that is impractical and unlikely is trials in Pakistan of the suspects that the Pakistan government has suggested.