![]() ALLAHABAD: In a judgment with far-reaching implications, the Allahabad high court has ruled that a non-Muslim bride must convert to Islam to marry a Muslim. Failing that, the matrimony with a Muslim man would be void as it would contradict Islamic dicta and tenets of the Quran, the court said.
The ruling on Monday by a division bench comprising Justices Vinod Prasad and Rajesh Chandra, came on a writ petition filed by Dilbar Habib Siddiqui. The petitioner had sought quashing of an FIR registered against him on March 17 under sections 323, 366 and 363 of IPC with Naini PS, Allahabad and prayed the court not interfere in his peaceful matrimonial life with Khushboo Jaiswal. The judges directed a speedy probe into the marriage of Siddiqui and ordered the cops to separate Khushboo Jaiswal, who was lodged in Nari Niketan, and hand her over to her parents.
The primary question for adjudication was on whether the FIR could be quashed or not. A perusal of the contents of the FIR indicated that Khushboo Jaiswal was alleged to have been abducted by the petitioner three months prior to its lodging. However, the petitioner had succeeded in preventing the FIR from being registered. The FIR was filed by the girl's mother, Sunita Jaiswal, who alleged that the petitioner had abducted her daughter. She contended that Khushboo never converted to Islam and there was also no documentary evidence to suggest so.
"In our above conclusion we are fortified by the fact that in the affidavit filed by Khusboo herself subsequent to her alleged contract marriage, she has described herself as Khushboo and not by any Islamic name. As Khushboo, she could not have contracted marriage according to Muslim customs. In those documents she has addressed herself as Khushboo Jaiswal," the verdict said.
"Thus, what is conspicuously clear is that Khushboo Jaiswal never converted and embraced Islam and therefore her marital tie with the petitioner Dilbar Habib Siddiqui is a void marriage since the same is contrary to Islamic dicta and tenets of Holy Quran," the court ruled. Source: The Times Of India
 Two Chicago men were indicted Thursday on charges they planned a violent attack on a Danish newspaper and helped lay the groundwork for the November 2008 terrorist rampage that killed 166 people in the Indian city of Mumbai. David Coleman Headley and businessman Tahawwur Hussain Rana were named in a 12-count superseding indictment that for the first time alleged Rana was in on the planning of the attacks by a team of 10 terrorists. Headley, 49, an American citizen, and Rana, 49, a Canadian national who has been in business in Chicago for more than a dozen years, are both in federal custody in Chicago. Headley's attorney, John Theis, had no comment on the new indictment. A message was left for Rana's attorney, Patrick Blegan. Retired Pakistani military officer Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed and reputed terrorist leader Ilyas Kashmiri — described as having been in regular contact with Al Qaeda's No. 3, Sheikh Mustafa Abu al-Yazid — also were charged in the new indictment. The charges were the first for Kashmiri in the case that surfaced with the October arrest of Headley and Rana in Chicago. Syed previously had been charged with involvement in the plans to attack the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, which in 2005 printed 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that sparked outrage in the Muslim world. Officials says all the defendants were linked to the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba, translated as Army of the Pure, which has long been involved in violent conflict with India over the disputed Kashmir territory. The Indian government has blamed the group for the Mumbai attacks. The charges against Headley, formerly named Daood Gilani, are the same as those included by the government in a criminal information filed in federal court last fall. But the charges against Rana have been expanded to include participation in the Mumbai attacks. Prosecutors have alleged that in a secretly recorded conversation in September 2009, Rana and Headley discussed the possible attack in Denmark as well as attacks on Bollywood, the Indian film industry; Somnath, a temple; and Shiv Sena, a political party with strains of Hindu nationalism. They said Headley and Rana also spoke about a meeting between Rana and a man they called "Pasha" days before 10 gunmen rampaged through Mumbai. Prosecutors said Pasha is Syed. They said Syed helped put Headley in touch with Kashmiri, described as a leader of the terrorist group Harakat-ul Jihad Islami. FoxNews 
 THE death toll from a suicide attack outside a Shi'ite Muslim mosque in Pakistani-administered Kashmir rose to seven after two people died overnight, officials say. The attack in Muzaffarabad came as Pakistan put tens of thousands of security forces on alert, fearing sectarian clashes and militant attacks as millions of Shi'ites mark the seventh-century killing of Imam Hussein.
Officials said the bomber tried to enter the mosque, which was crowded with Shi'ites gathering to pray on the eve of Ashura in Pakistan.
"The death toll has reached seven in the suicide blast. Two people died overnight in hospital," said deputy Muzaffarabad commissioner Chaudhry Imtiaz.
Rashid Shah, a police official, confirmed the toll, saying: "There are three policemen and four civilians among the dead."
During Ashura, worshippers clad in black march through the streets, flailing themselves with chains to commemorate the killing of Imam Hussein by armies of the Sunni caliph Yazid in 680.
 If they did venture out, the could be killed. Islamic Tolerance Alert from the Kingdom of the Two Holy Places: "Crew members stranded in Muslim holy city," from Herald Scotland, December 18 Thirty Flyglobespan crew members are stranded in the Muslim holy city of Medina in Saudi Arabia. The airline had a contract to carry passengers between Delhi in India and Medina for the Hajj pilgrimage. Flyglobespan captain Bob Lee revealed that the crew members have been confined to their hotel for at least four days because, as non-Muslims, they are not allowed to move around the city. He said crew members were unable to get seats on flights out of Medina because of the huge demand. Capt Lee said 1,000 Flyglobespan passengers from India were also trying to find alternative flights home, adding to the difficulties facing the crew. Katrina McBride, from Fife, said: "My daughter and a number of other crew who work for Flyglobespan are currently based in Saudi and India - who's looking after them? Who will bring them home, when and how soon? "We are currently in limited communication with my daughter who is in a state of panic. "She has already phoned, crying her eyes out worrying about what will happen, who will pay her hotel bill as she been working out there for almost six weeks?" With thanks to JihadWatch
 MUMBAI, India -- The accused gunman in last year's bloody siege of Mumbai retracted his detailed confession Friday, saying police tortured him into admitting his role in the attacks that left 166 people dead. Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, who is being tried in a special court and was photographed carrying an assault rifle during the attack on Mumbai's main train station, told the judge he came to Mumbai as a tourist and was arrested 20 days before the siege began. On the day the attacks started, Mr. Kasab said, police took him from his cell because he resembled one of the gunmen, shot him to make it look like he had been involved in the violence and re-arrested him. Friday's statement was not the first reversal from Mr. Kasab. In February, he told a judge he wanted to attack India in order to free the divided region of Kashmir where Muslim militants are fighting for independence. He later recanted that statement, saying it was obtained under duress. It was unclear what impact Mr. Kasab's statement would have on the case, and the prosecution brushed it off. "All the while, I expected that Mr. Kasab was about to take a U-turn in the case," said Ujjwal Nikam, the prosecutor. "He is a military-trained commando. It's not going to affect our case." In July, Mr. Kasab, who could face the death penalty if convicted, surprised the court when he suddenly confessed, saying he would rather be hanged in this world than face "God's punishment" in the next. In his confession, he spoke of spraying gunfire into the crowd at the train station and described in detail a network of training camps and safe houses across Pakistan, revealing the names of four men he said were his handlers. The photo of Kasab casually walking through the station with his rifle has become the enduring image of the attacks. But Kasab said police tortured him into falsely confessing. The assault 13 months ago lasted nearly three days and paralyzed India's commercial hub. During the attacks, 10 young men armed with assault rifles stormed two luxury hotels, a Jewish center and the train station. Nine of the gunmen were killed, leaving only Mr. Kasab, who was wounded in a shootout with police, authorities said. He told the court Friday he was initially arrested last year after wandering around Mumbai late at night looking for a place to stay, and his Pakistani citizenship aroused suspicion. After he was re-arrested for the Mumbai attack, he said, four white men came to visit him in jail, including David Coleman Headley, who is jailed in Chicago on charges he conspired in the siege. The judge then told Mr. Kasab not to reveal any more details on Headley. Mr. Headley, the 49-year-old son of an American mother and Pakistani father, is also charged with planning to attack a Danish newspaper. WSJ
 by Ryan Mauro Five Americans from the northern Virginia and Washington, D.C., area have been arrested in Pakistan on their way to commit jihad. The fact that they were caught before they got to hook up with those to-die-for 72 virgins (the ones that, according to one Saudi preacher, are white and have no phlegm, feces, urine, or perhaps most appealingly, menstrual cycles) is itself a success in the war on terror. In order to capitalize on this success, though, we need to learn several lessons from the episode. The first lesson is that we cannot ignore how Pakistan-based extremist groups have penetrated America’s shores. One of the student’s uncles, who is part of the Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist group, provided them with a safe house where they were ultimately captured. This group was created in the year 2000 after Maulana Masood Azhar, a former senior leader of Harakat ul-Ansar, was released from prison in exchange for 155 hostages. The group is primarily focused on fighting India over Kashmir and has carried out many attacks, including the 2001 attack on India’s parliament, and they are suspected of being linked to plots to kill former Pakistani President Musharraf when he was in office. The group had training camps in Afghanistan when the Taliban was in power and has received funding from Osama bin Laden.
According to the Australian government, the group met with various terrorist organizations in June 2008, where they agreed to shift their focus to removing coalition forces from Afghanistan. These aren’t the first Americans that JEM has recruited. In 2004, a man in Colorado was deported after it was learned that he had been trained in one of the group’s camps. There are also sympathizers, as found out earlier this year when four men were arrested for plotting to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and to use Stinger missiles to shoot down military aircraft flying out of the Air National Guard base in Newburgh, New York. The plot was busted when an FBI informant posed as a member of JEM, with whom the ringleader discussed his desire to join the group. Investigators should be on the lookout for a potential link between the five Americans and Jamaat ul-Fuqra, known in the U.S. as “Muslims of America.”
The United Press International reported in 2002 that ul-Fuqra “is a splinter group” of JEM and is also linked to Harakat ul-Mujahideen. As discussed previously, ul-Fuqra has isolated communities in the U.S. that are used as paramilitary training centers, as a videotape recently released by the Christian Action Network shows. More at Pajamas Media
 THE al-Qaida-affiliated militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba has been actively planning one or more additional Mumbai-style attacks in India. The claim is based on scouting by a Chicago man recently charged with being a long-time clandestine operative of the group, according to current and former US, Indian and European counterterrorism officials. FBI and Justice Department officials spent last week in India and Pakistan as part of an urgent effort to head off such an attack, sharing a wealth of information from their investigation into the activities of David Coleman Headley, the officials said. The new plots, believed to be in the works for months, are most likely against “soft” civilian targets such as hotels or synagogues frequented by Americans, Israelis and other Westerners, the officials said. But India's National Defense College and other government sites have also been scouted as targets, according to officials and FBI affidavits recently unsealed in Chicago. The Justice Department last week filed terrorism charges against a third former Pakistani military officer in the Denmark plot. Those accusations are sure to exacerbate tensions in the region, current and former US and allied officials said. Washington and India have long accused the Pakistani military of maintaining close ties to Lashkar and other militant groups and using them for attacks on India. Pakistan has long denied those accusations and demanded proof. The Australian
 Terror suspect David Headley was questioned by an airport inspector in August and deceptive answers about his travels abroad helped officials begin to unravel Mr. Headley's alleged double life. The 49-year-old Chicago man was charged this week for helping plot the terror attack in Mumbai a year ago that killed 166 people. Federal authorities, already suspicious of him, used his return to the U.S. this summer as an opportunity, according to officials.
A border inspector asked Mr. Headley about his overseas travel, according to court records and people familiar with the case. Mr. Headley said he was working for a company called First World Immigration Service. First World is a business that allegedly provided Mr. Headley with cover as he traveled to scout terrorist targets for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group responsible for the November 2008 assault in Mumbai, according to the federal charges. Agents searched Mr. Headley's luggage and found it "contained no papers or other documents relating to such a business," according to court documents. They also searched tax records and found no record of income paid to Mr. Headley by the company, court records show. U.S. officials said Tuesday the questioning at the airport gave a significant boost to the investigation. Mr. Headley was returning to the U.S. from a trip to Denmark in which he was scouting potential targets, authorities alleged. He is also being charged with planning an armed assault on a Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. Authorities said little more about the airport interview, including where it happened or why they had become suspicious of Mr. Headley. But court records showed that federal surveillance of Mr. Headley, who is an American, accelerated afterward. Mr. Headley's case is the most potent example of a U.S. born radical. Law enforcement and terrorism specialists said Lashkar's alleged deployment of Mr. Headley underscored the usefulness of recruits with U.S. passports in terror plots. Mr. Headley traveled to India and Pakistan over nearly two years to videotape targets and brief his co-conspirators in the Mumbai attacks, according to the federal charges. Westerners have largely played supporting roles in terror activities, but Mr. Headley's ability to travel freely on a U.S. passport to Pakistan, India and Denmark gave him high value, a U.S. law enforcement official said. "It's exactly the way you'd think al Qaeda would want to use operatives," said Evan Kohlmann, who has testified on Lashkar as an expert witness in U.S. and British courts. More at WSJ
 A CHICAGO man already accused of plotting to kill employees of a Danish newspaper was today charged with taking part in the planning of the 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said. David Coleman Headley conducted extensive surveillance of targets in Mumbai for more than two years preceding the attack on India's largest city that killed about 170 people, the DoJ said in a statement. Mr Headley, 49, was charged with six counts of conspiracy to bomb public places in India, to murder and maim persons in India and Denmark, to provide material support to foreign terrorist plots, and to provide material support to Pakistani-based terror organization Lashkar-e-Taiba. He was also charged on six counts of aiding and abetting the murder of US citizens in India. Mr Headley is the first American to be charged. In October, Mr Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48, were alleged to have been involved in a plot they codenamed the “Mickey Mouse Project” to attack facilities and employees of Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper that offended many Muslims with its Mohammed cartoons.
 by Salim Mansur There has been a little storm in a teacup over the itinerary of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's recent visit to India in the pages of the National Post. Some people have expressed unhappiness with Harper for his journey to Amritsar in Punjab, the sacred city of the Sikhs, and in visiting the Golden Temple for political mileage with Canada's Sikh community. Others were put off by the prime minister for going to Mumbai, the city terrorized by Islamist warriors (jihadists) sent from Pakistan in Nov. 2008. In Mumbai, he visited the Chabad House of the Orthodox Jews where six people were murdered, including Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his pregnant wife Rivkah. Again, it is implied Harper was cynically exploiting his official visit to India for the political purpose of securing Jewish votes in Canada. There is some legitimate ground to be critical of Harper's visit to the Golden Temple and how such a visit might be viewed as pushing the buttons of ethnic politics that is demeaning to all Canadians. The same cannot be said of Harper taking time to pay respect at the Chabad House. But this visit was neither about merely remembering the horror of Islamist terror descending upon India's largest and most cosmopolitan city, nor the obscene hunt by the jihadists for a few Jews and their murder in a city of more than 14 million people.
It was instead much more with Harper displaying a sense of compassion, grieving and solidarity with India after Indians had suffered their own version of 9/11. The Chabad House in Mumbai symbolizes what modern India represents as the world's largest democracy and what the Islamists hate. India's nationalism is a composite nourished by diverse streams of ethnicities and religions over many centuries. Jews arrived in India about the time Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, was born in the 6th century before Christ. This is more than a millennium before Islam arrived and nearly two millennia before Sikhism was preached in the Punjab. In recent decades, an unfortunate distance grew between India and Israel when New Delhi leaned towards the Arab world. But in 1992, the two democracies established full diplomatic relations and this has grown into a strategic partnership befitting the history of the two people. This includes India's Muslims -- the second largest community of Muslims in the world after that of Indonesia -- whose leaders have travelled to Jerusalem and embraced Jews and Israel in the fullness of their faith-tradition. India's blemishes and virtues are not hidden. They are out in the open -- the poverty of her multitudes, the sacrifices in the making and preserving of her democracy, the struggle to make the transition into a modern industrial society -- and openly discussed as the founders of modern India wished it. India, as an open, secular democracy where all of the world's faiths are present, was under assault by the Islamist terrorists. And by murdering Jews in Mumbai, these terrorists were indicating Jews are not safe anywhere. In visiting the Chabad House, Harper went the distance to affirm Canada's solidarity with India and the contempt for Islamists everywhere. salim.mansur@sunmedia.ca Toronto Sun
 THE prosecution case against the only accused Mumbai gunman to be captured alive will close today, one year after the attacks, bringing him a step closer to a possible death sentence. Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, who allegedly opened fire on commuters at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai's main railway station, has admitted to a high-security court that he was one of ten men who killed 166 people in a commando-style assault on India's financial capital a year ago.
To Indian eyes, however, justice will only be served when those behind the attack are brought to trial - something that they say would require more action by Pakistan, which is accused of sheltering them.
Mr Kasab, a Pakistani national, is accused of being a footsoldier for the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group. He is charged with murder and waging war on India - crimes that carry the death penalty.
Mumbai is preparing to mark the first anniversary of last November's horrific attack, carried out by at least 10 armed men at several locations around the city. The bombings and shootings that left 166 people dead and hundreds wounded not only horrified Mumbai's residents, but also revealed a security vacuum in India's financial capital. Dan Nolan takes a look back at how the attacks unfolded. Al Jazeera
 One year after terrorists struck at the heart of India's financial hub, Mumbai is still reeling from the shock of the attacks that left 183 people dead, including nine terrorists, and hundreds more injured. At nightfall on November 26, armed terrorists came ashore in Mumbai, having left the Pakistani port city of Karachi by boat. They attacked several high profile targets throughout the city, including two luxury hotels – the Taj Mahal Palace and the Oberoi-Trident – along with the main railway terminal, a Jewish cultural center, a café frequented by westerners, a movie theater and two hospitals. Six Americans were among the 26 foreigners reported killed. This was not a first for the city of Mumbai. In March 1993, several car bombs were set off at important landmarks across the city, including the stock exchange, killing around 250 people. In July 2006, another series of blasts ripped through Mumbai's commuter train network killing more than 200 people. However, even having "been here before," the attacks that transpired on November 26th were not just more of the same; the 2008 attacks featured stark differences from the past and mark an important step in the evolution of urban terrorism in India.
Terrorists for the first time employed frontal assault techniques and sophisticated technology, including global positioning system handsets, satellite phones, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service to stay in touch with their handlers in Pakistan.
Those handlers – watching events in real time on television – orchestrated the attacks from several thousand miles away. Before November 26th, terrorists used bombs triggered by timers to wage jihad on Indian cities, with the notable exception of an attack by five armed men on the Indian Parliament in December 2001. "The Mumbai attacks last November were unprecedented in terms of scale and intensity," Brahma Chellaney, a top strategic expert at a leading think tank in New Delhi, said in an interview with the Investigative Project on Terrorism. "The terrorists were careful to choose those [targets] that would create rage across India." They "took on the rich and the wealthy in India by targeting those two luxury hotels, and by taking on a Jewish center in Mumbai, they took on some foreigners who were present in that Jewish Center in addition to those who were present in the two hotels." "Even a year later now on the anniversary of the Mumbai attacks, India hasn't recovered from those attacks," Chellaney added. Read more at IPT
 By MATTHEW ROSENBERG ISLAMABAD -- The Islamist militant group behind the deadly attack in Mumbai one year ago remains a potent force determined to strike India and the West, and a source of acrimony between South Asia's nuclear-armed rivals, say officials and members of the militant faction. Indian officials and experts say at least six new plots against Mumbai by the Pakistan-based group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, have been disrupted in the 12 months since 10 gunmen wrought three days of havoc on India's financial capital, killing 166 people. Lashkar's infiltration of India's part of Kashmir is again on the upswing, the officials say; and a U.S. citizen with alleged ties to Lashkar was recently arrested in Chicago, evidence of the group's reach, U.S. officials say. "Our aims are the same today as they were 10 years ago," said a man who identified himself as a former Lashkar militant now working with its charity arm. "We are waging war on the enemies of Islam." U.S. officials and experts say hitting India remains the primary focus for Lashkar, which was nurtured in the 1990s by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency for use as a proxy against Indian forces in the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir. Pakistan banned the group in 2002 and officials here say they cut ties with it at the time. But no one disputes that Lashkar continued to operate from Pakistan, repeatedly striking Indian targets in recent years. Another Mumbai-style attack, say officials from both countries, risks sparking a fourth war between the neighbors. At the very least, Lashkar's continued existence presents a major obstacle to peace between the rivals. The tension also jeopardizes U.S. efforts in Afghanistan by keeping the bulk of Pakistan's sizable army focused on India, not the Taliban, say U.S. officials. Yet Lashkar endures today because Pakistan's pledges to dismantle it in the wake of the Mumbai attack remain largely unfulfilled, say U.S., Indian and some Pakistani officials. The group's long ties to Pakistan's powerful security establishment and the deep roots it has put down in towns and villages through its charity arm leave the government with a difficult challenge. Many Pakistanis still doubt Lashkar's role in the attack, and officials here privately say they fear a popular backlash if they move too forcefully against the group. Timeline - Nov. 26, 2008: 10 men from the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba begin a gun-and-grenade assault on targets in Mumbai, lasting nearly three days and leaving at least 174 people dead.
- Dec. 11, 2008: Pakistan moves against Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the charity front of Lashkar, arresting the group's leaders and shuttering its offices a day after the U.N. sanctioned the group. Days earlier, Pakistan also began arresting suspected members of Lashkar.
- Jan. 5, 2009: India gives Pakistan its first dossier of what it says is evidence that Lashkar orchestrated the Mumbai attack. The two countries have since repeatedly exchanged additional dossiers, although each side has complained about the information provided by the other.
- Jan. 6, 2009: After weeks of denials, Pakistan acknowledges that the single gunmen captured by Indian police in Mumbai, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, is a Pakistani citizen.
- Feb. 12, 2009: Pakistan publicly acknowledges for the first time that the Mumbai attack was partly planned on its soil and says it has arrested most of the key plotters, including the alleged operations chief of Lashkar, Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi.
- June 2, 2009: A Pakistani court orders the founder of Lashkar, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, released from house arrest, finding that the government does not have enough evidence to hold him. Mr. Saeed maintains that he runs a charity, nothing more.
- July 20, 2009: The single attacker captured by Indian police, Mohammaed Ajmal Kasab, confesses in open court that he took part in the assault. He says he was trained by Lashkar in Pakistan.
Pakistani officials also worry about taking on a potent enemy as they are trying to beat back the Taliban, which has killed hundreds of people in terrorist attacks in Pakistan since early October. U.S. officials and analysts also say factions within Pakistan's military still see Lashkar as a potential weapon to be used in any future conflicts with India. Lashkar "has historically been Pakistan's most reliable proxy against India and elements within the military clearly wish to maintain this capability," according to a report this week by security analyst Stephen Tankel in the CTC Sentinel, published by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Pakistan, following India and the U.S., concluded in the weeks after the Mumbai attack that it was carried out by Lashkar. Islamabad moved against the group, arresting dozens of people and banning its charity wing, Jamaat-ud-Dawa. More at WSJ
 New Delhi: The former Union Law Minister and senior lawyer, Ram Jethmalani, caused a flutter at an international conference on terrorism here on Saturday by alleging that Wahabism was responsible for terrorism, provoking a walkout by Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to India Faisal-al-Trad. In his address, Mr. Jethmalani, who is president of the All-India Senior Advocates Association, said:
“Unfortunately in the 17th century, they produced an evil man in Saudi Arabia by the name of Wahab, who was concerned about the decline of the Muslim world, but he hit upon a wrong remedy.” He alleged that the Wahabi terrorism instilled rubbish in the minds of young people to carry out terrorist attacks. When he said “India had friendly relations with a country that supported Wahabi terrorism,” Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador Faisal-al-Trad was seen walking out of the conference held at Vigyan Bhavan. Adish C. Aggarwala, chairman, All-India Bar Association and joint organiser of the conference, said the Ambassador returned after Union Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily clarified that Mr. Jethmalani’s views were not those of the government. Mr. Jethmalani said: “It was unfortunate that entire Islam as a religion was being blamed for terrorism. There are also Hindu terrorists and Buddhist terrorists.”
He said he was a student of all religions, including Islam, and had the highest respect for the Prophet, who he said was a man of peace. Describing the Non-Aligned Movement and Panchsheel as evil, he said India should align with the forces of good to combat evil forces. “India and its Foreign Ministers must learn to reassess the doctrines of the past. India’s foreign policy establishment should be courageous to shun the country’s relationships with its enemies.” Mr. Jethmalani, who is representing the Anil Ambani group RNRL in the Ambani brothers’ gas dispute in the Supreme Court, said the government, in its arguments, had said it intended bringing gas from the country which supported terrorism, an apparent reference to the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project. Taking exception to Mr. Jethmalani’s remarks, Mr. Moily said: “India’s commitment to the Non-Aligned Movement would not be shaken by any country or any individual. The views expressed by my senior colleague Mr. Jethmalani are not the views of the government.” He said: “Terrorism cannot be attributed to any particular religion, as no religion teaches terrorism.” The government was against any attempt to link terrorism to a particular religious community, but it stood for “inclusive development” of all. In July, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh proposed a comprehensive convention on international terrorism at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Egypt, and the government was committed to dealing with trans-border terrorism in that spirit, he said. Singapore Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong described the Mumbai terror attacks as a “grave tragedy” against humanity. He called for better coordination among nations to deal with the menace, because no individual nation could fight it on its own. “The countries must exchange and share information with each other to tackle terrorism.” Justice Awn S. Al-Khasawneh, judge of the International Court of Justice, asked Mr. Jethmalani not to make sweeping statements. He decried any attempt to link terrorism to any religion, thus creating a fear psychosis. “The message from this conference must not be fear-mongering, but tackling terrorism within the framework of law. Combat it with methods such as combination of cooperation among countries by preaching the message of law and peace rather than fear mongering.” The Hindu
 Two bombs have exploded in India's northeastern Assam state, killing six people and wounding dozens more, police say. Six people died after two blasts went off within minutes of each other on Sunday outside a police station in Nalbari, a town near the state capital, Gauhati, a local police official said. Up to 25 people have been wounded in the blasts. Bhaskar Mahanta, Assam's police chief, said authorities suspect the separatist group United Liberation Front of Asom, or Ulfa, is behind the blasts. No group has claimed responsibility. A senior Ulfa leader, however, telephoned local newspaper offices and television stations to deny its involvement. Mahanta said the bombers had parked two bicycles fitted with carriers packed with explosives outside the Nalbari police station, which is located in a congested part of the town. These went off, killing passers-by and wounding the others. Mahanta said police had received intelligence reports suggesting that the Ulfa was planning to avenge last week's arrest of two of the group's leaders. The blasts came soon after New Delhi announced the government will provide safe passage to separatist leaders willing to talk and find a lasting solution to the state's problems. Last week, suspected Ulfa fighters triggered a powerful explosion, derailing a freight train and setting more than a dozen oil-tanker railway cars on fire in Assam. India's northeast is beset by scores of conflicts. More than 10,000 people have died in separatist violence over the past decade. The region is home to dozens of separatist groups who accuse the Indian government of exploiting the area's natural resources while doing little for the indigenous people. Al Jazeera
 Italian police say they have arrested two Pakistani men accused of providing logistical support for last year's deadly attacks in Mumbai. The two, father and son, were detained during an early-morning raid in Brescia, police in the northern Italian city said on Saturday. The suspects managed a money-transfer agency and helped fund the November 26 attacks, police said in a statement. The day before the attacks, they transferred money to activate an internet phone account that was used by the attackers and their accomplices, Stefano Fonzi, the head of anti-terror police in Brescia, said. The attacks in India's economic capital killed at least 166 people and left another 300 injured. Ten men are believed to have carried out the 60-hour assault. New Delhi and Washington blamed the siege on Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned Pakistan armed group. Italian police began the investigation in December after being alerted by the FBI that the money had been sent from Italy, Fonzi told The Associated Press news agency. The funds were transferred under the identity of another Pakistani man who had never been in Italy and was not involved in the alleged crimes, he said. The two are accused of aiding and abetting international terrorism as well as illegal financial activity. Transferring funds using the identity of other people was a common practice at the Brescia agency, Fonzi said in a telephone interview. Two more Pakistanis were arrested in Saturday's raids for allegedly committing fraud and other crimes using the same system, but they were not linked to the Mumbai attacks. A fifth Pakistani man escaped arrest and was still being sought. India has repeatedly called on Islamabad to charge the founder of Lashkar, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, with masterminding the Mumbai attacks. New Delhi has been demanding action against Saeed and other Pakistan-based fighters before it will resume a formal peace process. Pakistani police announced in September that Saeed would be arrested for propagating jihad and collecting funds for a charity he heads. Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the sole surviving suspect, told a court in Mumbai in July that he was one of the attackers. He gave details of his group's journey from Pakistan on a boat, their subsequent landing in Mumbai, and the rampage that followed as they shot and killed people at a railway station, a Jewish centre and two five-star hotels, including the iconic Taj Mahal. Al Jazeera
 Allegations that a former Pakistani military officer was closely involved in a suspected terrorist plot with a Canadian are raising new concerns about where Pakistan stands in global counterterrorism efforts. Indian officials have long suspected that Pakistan was somehow connected to attacks in Mumbai in 2008 that killed 166 people and wounded hundreds more. The New York Times reported this week that a previously unidentified player is a recently retired high-ranking Pakistani military officer. The report is expected to put further strain on Pakistan's relations with India, but also with the United States. "It's an excellent illustration of how deep the Islamist sympathies run in the Pakistani military," said Professor Tristan Mabry, an expert on India-Pakistan relations with the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. Prof. Mabry estimates that the United States gives Pakistan about $1.5-billion in economic aid each year plus $1.5-billion in military funding. This infuriates India, he said, which sees itself as a victim of Pakistani-supported terrorism. An FBI affidavit unsealed this month makes repeat references to someone it identifies only as "Individual B." Citing sources, The New York Times reported that the individual is an ex-military officer, but did not give a name. The affidavit was filed after the arrests of Tahawwur Rana, a Pakistani-born Canadian who has lived the past 10 years in Chicago, and his boyhood friend David Headley, who was known as Daood Gilani until three years ago. None of the allegations against the two men has been proven in court. Based on intercepts of phone calls and e-mail exchanges - primarily between Mr. Rana, Mr. Headley, the ex-Pakistani military official and two men listed by the U.S. as senior terrorism figures - the FBI arrested Mr. Rana and Mr. Headley last month under suspicion of planning a terrorist attack. The FBI's case focused primarily on claims the two men planned to attack the offices of the Denmark newspaper Jyllands-Posten over cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that infuriated many Muslims. The FBI's affidavit notes, however, that the plot appeared to shift this fall to an attack in India. New information about Mr. Headley surfaced this week in a profile by the Philadelphia Examiner. The paper had interviewed Mr. Headley's mother, Serrill Headley, in 1974. According to that 35-year-old interview, Ms. Headley, who grew up in the Philadelphia suburb of Bryn Mawr, said she married a Pakistani diplomat and lived in Pakistan for 10 years, but the marriage fell apart and she lost custody of her children. In 1977, she brought her son to Philadelphia, but she said he had a hard time accepting that she ran a bar because of his Muslim upbringing. In recent years, Mr. Headley and Mr. Rana both posted regular messages on a Yahoo message group for former students of a military school in Hasan Abdal, Pakistan, according to the FBI. In one 2008 post, Mr. Headley wrote that Islam should not be mocked, and that he was "disposed toward violence" against the Danish cartoonists and authors Sherry Jones and Irshad Manji, a Canadian. Globe and Mail
 I. Ten Gunmen, Ten Minutes Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) hummed with the foot traffic of late commuters. Under hulking steel rafters, held over from the British colonial era, the PA announcer issued final calls for departing suburban trains as they lurched away one after the next, packed with passengers.
Long-distance travelers, mostly the poor North Indian migrants who flock to the city by the tens of thousands, took up benches and spots on the concrete floor, resting on sheets of newsprint with their piles of luggage. Fongen Fernandes, the spry fifty-three-year-old manager of the upper level of the Re-Fresh snack bar with its tall glass panels overlooking the platforms, was talking to a graphic designer.
Fernandes stood admiring the designer’s digital handiwork on a laptop open at a table in the far corner of the restaurant, when he felt sand-like debris sprinkle the top of his head. “What’s this?” he said to himself. He wiped his smooth pate a couple times and continued talking, unaware that below two young men had emerged from a bathroom abutting Platform 13 and begun spraying the crowd with gunfire, unaware that a high-velocity bullet shot from less than thirty yards away had missed him by inches and lodged in the wall over his shoulder.
He bid the designer farewell and was halfway down the stairs when another series of rounds cracked against the wall and showered sparks into the air. A grenade exploded on the platform. Rattled by the sudden chaos, Fernandes scrambled back upstairs, cut the lights, and ducked behind some advertising placards that were pasted to the base of the snack bar windows. He instructed everyone to slide belly-down and hide behind a bank of metal food warmers. One woman started to scream. He motioned for her to shut up. When she wouldn’t, Fernandes threw his handkerchief to a waiter who held it to her mouth. “Don’t let go of her,” he said. Fernandes stole a look at the scene below. Bodies lay scattered on the station floor, slicked in blood. The gunmen scanned and swiveled. They shot from the hip, in steady bursts. The shorter, stocky one, Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, wore beige cargo pants and a blue t-shirt with VERSACE printed in white on the chest; the other, Ismail Khan, was slimmer and wore all black. Both carried rucksacks. On any other day, Fernandes would have taken them for college boys on their way home. These were no students, though. The ease with which they wielded their weapons amid the panic betrayed a professional’s mien. Two more volleys lashed into the snack bar. One hit Mukesh Aggarwal, a co-worker in charge of the ground level, in the stomach. Fernandes, a devout Catholic, started to pray in the dark. “St. Anthony, please deliver us . . .” 9:40 P.M. Leopold Café.Two young men—one named Abu Shoaib, the other known simply as Nazir—got out of a yellow and black city cab across the street from the Leopold Café. Open since 1871 in the heart of the Colaba district, the multi-level dive was packed with more than a hundred people enjoying western food and cheap pints of Kingfisher beer to the din of rock music that spilled onto the sidewalk, where hawkers plied t-shirts and offered hash to foreign backpackers. Co-owner Farhang Jehani stepped out to take a phone call. He watched the pair of young men pay the cab fare and wait by the curb, bags slung over their shoulders. Driver Fulchand Bhind was grateful for the extravagant tip the young men had given.
Unbeknownst to him, the two men had slipped a bomb, set to go off in one hour, under his seat. As Bhind pulled away, the bomb clicked silently toward detonation. How could he have known? These young men certainly didn’t look like terrorists. Jehani, across the street, assumed they were students waiting for friends.
When his call was finished, he went inside and around to the back staircase that leads to the mezzanine-level bar to watch the cricket match. India was playing England, and they were winning. Jehani’s family is part of Mumbai’s long-established Parsi community, émigrés from Iran who practice the Zoroastrian faith, but like any lifelong Indian, he is passionate about cricket. Read it all at VQR Online H/T: David F.
 by Rusty Shackleford Since the 9/11 attacks, conventional wisdom has held that acts of terror on U.S. soil would most likely come from abroad. Much time and effort have been spent on beefing up border security to make sure the next Mohammad Atta never reaches the homeland.
Yet the massacre at Fort Hood by Major Nidal Hasan underscored what has long been known in counterterrorism circles: Muslims born and raised in the U.S. might become radicalized and perpetrate acts of terror here at home, and more resources need to be directed inward. Now, a string of arrests by the FBI over the past year has raised awareness of a new phenomenon: there exist Americans who wish to commit acts of terror abroad. For the most part, those arrested have been individuals who wished to join foreign jihadi groups as foot soldiers. Many of those attempts have failed.
Boston’s Tarek Mehanna went to Yemen to join al-Qaeda but was rebuffed. His friend Ahmad Abousamra traveled to Pakistan and Iraq for the same purpose and also failed. Similarly, several young men from North Carolina made a pilgrimage to the Palestinian territories to join in jihad against Israel, but they seem to have spent the majority of their time seeing the sights in Cairo. Late last month, two arrests in Chicago seemed to confirm a pattern of American citizens wishing to engage in acts of terror abroad but failing.
But new reports from India indicate that at least one of the two arrested may have been involved in planning the coordinated attacks in Mumbai last year. Those attacks killed 173 people and have been described as India’s 9/11. If these reports pan out, then a Chicago-area man who legally changed his name from Daood Gilani to David Headley — and who had previously been indicted for planning a foiled terror attack against Denmark’s Jylland Posten newspaper as “revenge” for printing cartoons of the prophet Mohammad — conducted surveillance of targets in Mumbai. He helped facilitate the massacre in which innocent civilians were methodically gunned down at the real-time urging of their Lashkar-e-Taiba controllers from Pakistan. More at Pajamas Media
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