Terrorists who carried out the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai were trained by the “frogmen” of the Pakistani Navy, Lashkar-e-Taiba operative David Coleman Headley had told the National Investigation Agency (NIA) team who questioned him in Chicago recently.
The disclosure by Headley — an American citizen of Pakistan origin who had done the groundwork for the Mumbai attacks — comes as a corroboration of the statement of the lone captured terrorist Ajmal Amir Kasab that the terrorists were given training by the Pakistani Navy, giving enough indication of the involvement of Pakistani establishment in the terror attacks.
During interrogation, Kasab had confessed that the 10 terrorists, including himself, had received training in swimming, diving and underwater combat from the frogmen.
“The role of frogmen was confirmed by Headley when the Indian investigators interrogated him in the U.S. last month,” senior officials in the Home Ministry said .
Home Secretary G.K. Pillai had recently stated that the Pakistan's spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was “literally controlling and coordinating the [Mumbai] attack from beginning to end.”
Officials said the Indian investigators so far had no plan to interrogate Headley's accomplice Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Canadian citizen of Pakistani-origin, as his involvement in the Mumbai attack conspiracy was limited to providing finance.
“If necessary, we may interrogate Rana also, though we have no immediate plan to do so,'' an official said. Headley had also told NIA team that the Pakistani intelligence agency had paid Rs.25 lakh to Lashkar to purchase a boat which the terrorists used to travel from Karachi to the Pakistani maritime boundary, where they hijacked an Indian fishing boat ‘Kuber' to reach Mumbai.
Headley also identified through voice sample test two ISI officers believed to be in constant contact with the terrorists, who carried out the 60-hour attack in Mumbai on November 26, 2008.
Officials said Indian investigators have information that ISI chief Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha had met one of the handlers of the Mumbai attack, Sajjid Mir, who is currently in a Pakistani jail.
“All this information has been shared by India with Pakistan through the multiple dossiers given to Islamabad,” officials said.
