PrairiePundit

Sofrep: Sources at the Pentagon have informed us that  Lashkar-e-Taiba  (LeT) has begun targeting Penguin’s staff at their imprint Dutton, specifically people close to the controversial book “ No Easy Day “. هؤلاء الكفار المرتبطة باى شكل من الاشكال مع تمجيد وفاة اسامة بن لادن يجب ان يموت Translation: ”The Infidels associated, in any way, with the glorifying of Usama bin Ladens death must die!”,  says   Hafiz Muhammad Saeed   Apparently the short list starts with Penguin publicist Christine Ball and co-author Kevin Maurer. نحن ندعو جميع انصار الاسلام هدف الكفار كريستين الكرة كيفن مورير اولا. وهذا من شأنه أن يجعل مثالا الغرب العظيم اسامة لن ينسى! Translation: We are calling all supporters of Islam to target Infidels Christine Ball and Kevin Maurer first.  This will make an example to the west that the great Usama will not be forgotten! ... LeT is the Pakistani Islamic religious bigot organization that...

Image via Wikipedia Washington Times: Two leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) continued to run the Pakistan -based terrorist group's operations while locked up in a Pakistani prison, according to a 2009 diplomatic message by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton . In her Aug. 10, 2009, cable, part of a document dump by the website WikiLeaks, Mrs. Clinton wrote that LeT founder Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi , the group's operations commander, "continue to run the organization, despite being detained for their role in the November Mumbai attacks ." Terrorists attacked Mumbai in a three-day assault in November 2008, killing 166 people, including six Americans. U.S. and Indian intelligence agencies believe LeT was behind the attack. Mrs. Clinton wrote that Lakhvi was responsible for LeT's military operations budget, which was around $5.2. million a year. He reportedly used the money to purchase "all materials required for [LeT] operati...

Image via Wikipedia NY Times: Police in Spain and Thailand arrested ten people suspected of operating a forging network that provided European passports to Al Qaeda -linked terrorist groups in order to smooth their entry into Western countries , the Spanish Interior Ministry said on Wednesday. Seven people — six Pakistanis and one Nigerian — were arrested in Barcelona during raids late Tuesday and early Wednesday, and three more — two Pakistanis and one Thai — were arrested in Bangkok , which served as the base for the operation, the ministry said in a statement. ... Police said the group was linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba , the Pakistan-based terror group behind Mumbai attacks in November 2008 that killed 163 people, and also provided counterfeit passports and other documents to the Tamil Tigers , the Sri Lankan separatist group defeated last year by the government after decades of war. ... The need for forged passports is an indicator that the enemy is having trouble getting ...

The Times of India has the story.

Washington Post: Three years before Pakistani terrorists struck Mumbai in 2008, federal agents in New York City investigated a tip that an American businessman was training in Pakistan with the group that later executed the attack. The previously undisclosed allegations against David Coleman Headley, who became a key figure in the plot that killed 166 people, came from his wife after a domestic dispute that resulted in his arrest in 2005. In three interviews with federal agents, Headley's wife said that he was an active militant in the terrorist group Lashkar-i-Taiba, had trained extensively in its Pakistani camps, and had shopped for night-vision goggles and other equipment, according to officials and sources close to the case. The wife, whom ProPublica is not identifying to protect her safety, also told agents that Headley had bragged of working as a paid U.S. informant while he trained with the terrorists in Pakistan, according to a person close to the case. Federal offi...

Image via Wikipedia Telegraph: Interpol has issued warrants for the arrest of two serving officers in the Pakistan army for alleged involvement in the 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai , investigators said on Friday. A third military figure, a retired Pakistan Army Major was also named as a suspect along with an al-Qaeda -linked commander and a leader of the Pakistan-based terrorist group, Lashkar e Taiba (LeT), which carried out the Mumbai attacks in which 166 were killed. By asking Interpol to issue warrants against two apparently senior Pakistan Army officers, India has intensified its campaign against Islamabad and strengthened its claim that some elements within Pakistan’s security forces supported the Mumbai attacks. The development follows an admission by the former military ruler General Musharraf earlier this week that Pakistan had raised terrorist groups to attack India because of its refusal to negotiate over the dispute on the future of Kashmir. Those named in th...

Telegraph: Hafiz Saeed, who is believed to be the founder of the Lashkar e Taiba terrorist group, was arrested in December 2008, weeks after the attacks when the United Nations declared his Jamat ud Dawa charity a front for the LeT. It came as the Pakistan government came under unprecedented international pressure amid compelling evidence that the attacks by ten 'fidayeen' terrorist commandos had been plotted and supported from Pakistan. Interrogations of the sole surviving gunman, Ajmal Kasab revealed that the gunmen had received special forces-style marine commando training before being put to sea from Karachi. Mr Saeed was released from house arrest in June last year when the Lahore High Court ruled his detention unconstitutional. He was rearrested in September last year but released once again the following month by another court order which said there was no evidence against him. The verdict had been challenged by Pakistan's federal and Punjab provincia...

Times: Indian intelligence officials suspect that the terrorist group behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks is planning another audacious strike on the country — this time from the air, using suicide bombers flying paragliders. U. K. Bansal, an Indian Home Ministry official, told reporters that the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba faction was thought to have acquired a number of the gliding parachutes. “We have intelligence reports that LeT has purchased 50 paragliding kits from Europe with an intention to launch attacks on India,” he said. ... It would be a very foolhardy attack, with no hope of changing the mind of the Indian government. It would in fact just be another mass murder for Allah attack resulting in less respect for Islam and the religious bigots who are attacking in the name of that religion.

NY Times: In a high-security jail here, five men — all members of the Islamic militant group described by the United States and India as the organizers of the terrorist rampage in Mumbai last year — were brought before a makeshift court in Pakistan’s first steps to bring them to justice. The brief appearances, described by a defense lawyer, were held in secret for security reasons on Saturday in a case that Pakistan says shows its willingness to prosecute the group, Lashkar-e-Taiba . Pakistan also says that the case will demonstrate that its military, which once backed the group as a surrogate force against India, has severed all ties. But behind the first glimmerings of the case, sympathies for Lashkar-e-Taiba and its jihadist and anti-Indian culture run deep in this country, raising a serious challenge to any long-lasting moves to dismantle the network. The membership of Lashkar-e-Taiba extends to about 150,000 people, according to a midlevel officer in Pakistan’s premier spy agency...

Reuters /NY Times: The lone surviving gunman from the Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people in November and raised tensions between India and Pakistan pleaded guilty in court on Monday, police said. Pakistani citizen Mohammad Ajmal Kasab , 21, pleaded guilty in a Mumbai court and was recording his confession there, the police officer overseeing the probe into the attacks told Reuters. "Yes, he has pleaded guilty in court today for the November attacks during a hearing," senior police officer Rakesh Maria said. Kasab, who had been videotaped carrying an AK-47 assault rifle while carrying out the assault on Mumbai's main train station, had been charged with 86 separate offences including murder and waging war against India. "He has confessed to his role and the fact that he was involved in the attacks that killed so many people during the attacks, the planning and the execution," Maria told Reuters. ... CNN reports the confession caught the prosecution by surpris...

Telegraph: Asif Zardari told a meeting of former senior civil servants in Islamabad, it was time to be honest about their deployment. "Let us be truthful to ourselves and make a candid admission of the realities," he said. "The terrorists of today were the heroes of yesteryears until 9/11 occurred and they began to haunt us as well." These groups were not thrown up because of government weakness, but as a matter of policy. He said they were deliberately "created and nurtured" as a policy to achieve some short-term tactical objectives. His comments amount to an admission that Pakistan trained Islamic terrorists to launch attacks on India as part of its long war over its claim on Kashmir. It came as at least 40 people were killed in a suspected US missile strike in north-west Pakistan. Three US drones are believed to have fired missiles at militants near Ladha in South Waziristan. It is the third strike in two days an...

NY Times: Pakistan acknowledged for the first time in public on Thursday that parts of the murderous Mumbai terror attacks were planned on its soil and said six new suspects were being held, including “the main operator.” Rehman Malik, the senior security official in the Interior Ministry, said the attackers had set sail from southern Pakistan to Mumbai, where they used inflatable boats whose engines had been purchased in the southern Pakistani port of Karachi. “Part of the conspiracy was done in Pakistan,” Mr. Malik said in a televised news briefing Thursday. He said a formal police inquiry had been launched “and I want to assure our nation, I want to assure the international community, that we mean business.” His remarks offered the fullest public accounting so far of Pakistan’s investigation into the Mumbai attacks last November, when 10 attackers went on a murderous spree through luxury hotels, a Jewish center and other targets, leaving 163 people dead. Only one of the attacke...

Telegraph: Fahim Ansari is accused of helping to plan the attacks in which 173 people were killed in November. His lawyer, Ejaz Naqvi, has filed legal papers with Mumbai magistrate's court, claiming the "white woman" removed all his clothes and showed him pornographic films. In the papers, he claims that three foreigners, including the woman, sexually abused him, causing him "severe itching and wounds" on his body, including his genitals. Mr Ansari, a devout Muslim, claims this amounts to torture because it is against his religion, The Sun newspaper has reported. A court in the Indian city ordered medical checks on "wounds on his private parts and all over his body." ... I am sure any wounds are self inflicted while he was masturbating to this fantasy. This sounds like a story that terrorist are taught to use upon capture. It is probably in their training manual. I also question his devotion to Islam, since he engaged in mass murder to achieve his p...

Times: The Federal Investigation Agency in Pakistan has said that the attacks on Mumbai last November were planned by an international terrorist network, including a Bangladesh-based radical group with links to al-Qaeda. Investigators said in a report that there was strong evidence that Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami was actively involved in the 60-hour siege and gun battle in the Indian commercial and financial capital in which 165 people died, and that the attack was carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group. Relations between neighbouring India and Pakistan – both nuclear-armed – have been strained by the attacks. ... The LET connection has been pretty evident for some time. It is not clear how Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami fits into the plot. I am sure al Qaeda would be proud of their work.

Washington Post: Pakistan closed nine offices of a controversial Islamic charity today and the nation's prime minister promised to honor new United Nations sanctions against the organization. The move to shutter offices of Jamaat-ud-Dawa comes amid mounting international pressure on Pakistan to crack down on a militant network blamed for the deadly terrorist attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai last month that killed 170 people. Ostensibly a charity, Jamaat-ud-Dawa has historic ties to the militant group Lashkar-i-Taiba, which Indian authorities blame for the Mumbai attacks. Along with closing the offices, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said the country would honor the restrictions placed on the group Wednesday night by the U.N. Security Council. The Security Council measure extend to the group's leadership and the four suspected masterminds of the Mumbai attacks, and includes a freeze on assets, a travel ban, and a prohibition against arms sales. ... Following...

Danger Room: A growing chorus of intelligence officials in the U.S. and in south Asia have pinned the Mumbai attacks on the Kashmir-based militants Lashkar-e-Taiba. But there's been hardly any mention of the extremist group's deep ties to American-based jihadists. Since 2003, at least five U.S. citizens have been convicted in federal court of conspiring to provide material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba. At least nine more men, considered to be in the same larger circle, have been convicted of firearms violations and other felonies. ( A partial list is here .) Several other cases are still making their way through the legal process. Islamic extremists in America have used Lashkar-e-Taiba ("LeT") as a "stepping stone" into the broader world of global terror, says Evan Kohlmann, a senior investigator at the NEFA Foundation . With easy-to-access training facilities, English-speaking recruiters, and connections to militants around the world, a Lashkar camp is ...

Washington Times: Lashkar-e-Taiba will not be crippled by Monday's arrest of the purported mastermind of the Mumbai attacks and at least 19 other members of the militant group, a Lashkar coordinator said. "We´re still well-organized and active," said the militant, who serves as a coordinator for the group, which has a large following despite being outlawed in 2002. The 20 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba were arrested Monday amid growing criticism that Pakistan has allowed the militant group to continue operating openly, despite claims to the contrary. The Lashkar coordinator spoke with The Washington Times in a safe house near Lahore , Pakistan's second-largest city, on the condition of anonymity - presumably to avoid arrest. He said Lashkar's strength in Pakistan was in the thousands. Pakistan on Monday announced the arrest of Zaki-u-Rehman Lakhvi, who was among 20 arrested during a raid in Muzaffarabad in the Pakistan-controlled portion of Kashmir. In...

Washington Post: In a move aimed at diffusing tensions with India , Pakistani authorities arrested a suspected ringleader of last month's deadly attacks in Mumbai, along with rounding up several others in a massive raid on an alleged Pakistani terrorist group in the Himalayan territory of Kashmir, Pakistani officials, witnesses and members of the group said Monday. Residents in the small Kashmiri town of Shawai Nala said dozens of Pakistani soldiers descended on a camp run by Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a Muslim aid organization suspected of funding the militant Pakistani group Lashkar-i-Taiba, about 3 p.m. Sunday. Mehboob Ahmed, a resident of the nearby city of Muzzaffarabad, the area's capital, said a Pakistani army helicopter gunship swept over the camp several times just before the ground was rocked by rocket fire and a fusillade of bullets fired by Pakistani forces. According to local residents and a Jamaat-ud-Dawa member, Pakistani security forces arrested 22 people, including Zak...

NY Times: Lashkar-e-Taiba , the Pakistani-based militant group suspected of conducting the Mumbai attacks, has quietly gained strength in recent years with the help of Pakistan ’s main spy service, assistance that has allowed the group to train and raise money while other militants have been under siege, American intelligence and counterterrorism officials say. American officials say there is no hard evidence to link the spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence , or ISI, to the Mumbai attacks. But the ISI has shared intelligence with Lashkar and provided protection for it, the officials said, and investigators are focusing on one Lashkar leader they believe is a main liaison with the spy service and a mastermind of the attacks. As a result of the assault on Mumbai, India’s financial hub, American counterterrorism and military officials say they are reassessing their view of Lashkar and believe it to be more capable and a greater threat than they had previously recog...

CNN: The attackers who killed nearly 180 people last week in Mumbai, India, had help from a Bangladeshi national, Indian security sources told CNN sister network CNN-IBN. The Bangladeshi national bought cell phone SIM cards for the attackers at several locations inside India, the sources said Thursday. SIM cards -- subscriber identity modules -- are portable memory-chips that make it easy to switch cell phones. Intelligence experts say they're used by terrorists to throw their pursuers off the trail. Indian authorities believe all the attackers were Pakistanis, specifically blaming Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), an Islamic militant group based in Pakistan. LeT has denied any responsibility for the attacks, but the sole surviving gunmen told interrogators he was trained by LeT, Indian authorities have said. ... ... one analyst who studies India-Pakistan tensions believes this operation was planned and carried out by militants from Bangladesh, Pakistan -- and India. "They needed ...