Kasab's nationality

[third eye]

Consequent to his hanging most Pak posters choose to deny that he was a Pak national.

For the record I am C&P a news item from the archives of The Dawn. It may help jog the memory.

Ajmal`s nationality confirmed
By Mubashir Zaidi

ISLAMABAD, Jan 7 Pakistani authorities, during the course of their own investigations into the Mumbai carnage, have established that the only surviving terrorist Ajmal Kasab is a Pakistani national.

After a series of conflicting statements by various officials representing different sections of the government, it was officially acknowledged that DawnNews TV`s news item about the official investigation report regarding Ajmal Kasab`s identity was correct.

Earlier, a high-ranking government official had told Dawn that the preliminary finding had provided enough information to conclude that the man at present in India`s custody was from a Punjab village, and perhaps belonged to a militant group that was bent upon destabilising the region by undermining the peace process.

The official, who requested anonymity, said the authorities were examining all parts of the puzzle on the basis of their own investigation, as well as the information provided by India and the Americans.

However, he said there was no doubt in the minds of the investigators that the captured terrorist was a Pakistani. “Sadly, it has been established that Kasab is a Pakistani national.”

But within minutes of the revelation, confusing, and somewhat conflicting, statements started emanating from different sections of the government in Islamabad. While the Indian television channel CNN-IBN quoted Pakistan`s National Security Adviser Mehmud Ali Durrani as saying that Ajmal Kasab`s identity as a Pakistani had been established, Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir told the same channel that it was premature to say anything because the investigation was continuing.

In the midst of all this, American news agency APTN quoted Information Minister Sherry Rehman as confirming that Ajmal Kasab in fact was a Pakistani national. The minister later confirmed it to Dawn that “he is Pakistani” and that investigations are ongoing.

Similarly, the Foreign Office which at the initial stage appeared either detached from reality or completely out of the loop, admitted by broadcasting through the state-run PTV that Ajmal Kasab was indeed a Pakistani national.

During the course of Dawn`s own investigation, a number of senior officials in the interior ministry and police said that investigations were started soon after initial reports had suggested that Ajmal Kasab might be a Pakistani national. But the authorities wanted to be doubly sure about his identity because there was no record of Kasab and his family in the national database maintained by Nadra. Details of preliminary investigations submitted to the government have still not been made public.

The official who confirmed to Dawn about the preliminary investigation report said Kasab was son of Amir Kasab and Mrs Noor Illahi. But the identity of other militants killed in Mumbai is yet to be established. Senior security officials, however, said that preliminary investigations had established that the militants were operating on their own and had absolutely no link with any section of the country`s security apparatus.

A top ranking western diplomat also confirmed to Dawn that there was no linkage between the terrorists who carried out the Mumbai carnage and the Pakistani security agencies, particularly the ISI. “There is ample evidence to prove that most of the terrorists belonged to Pakistan,” the diplomat said. “But there is not even a shred of evidence to suggest that the ISI or any other Pakistani intelligence agency had any links with these terrorists,” the diplomat said.

“And this is not based on what the Pakistanis have been telling us, as we have double checked it on our own,” the diplomat added.

The remarks belie the latest claim by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who on Tuesday had tried to up the ante by directly accusing the Pakistani security apparatus of being involved in the Mumbai carnage. Pakistan has already rejected the Indian accusation in strongest terms.

In a related development, a statement by Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani also said the Pakistan`s investigations into the Mumbai attacks had made progress. He said that some information of an interim nature on Indian investigations had been received. He did not elaborate.

Punjab`s dusty town of Faridkot became the centre of attention soon after the deadly Mumbai attack as the Indian authorities captured Kasab and claimed that he belonged to Faridkot. The town was thronged by local and foreign media and conflicting reports came out about the identity of Kasab.

At that time the government had, for obvious reasons, decided to adopt a tight-lipped policy, maintaining that only a thorough investigation, based on concrete information, could establish whether Kasab was a Pakistani national, and a resident of Faridkot.

Answering a question about consular access to Kasab, a senior official said the militant had damaged Pakistan `like no other`. “We are not yet sure when to ask for consular access. We may not ask for it. He is involved in a heinous crime,” the official said. Kasab also wrote a letter to the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi. Pakistani authorities said they were examining the letter.

Ajmal`s nationality confirmed | Latest news, Breaking news, Pakistan News, World news, business, sport and multimedia | DAWN.COM

 

[RoYaL~GuJJaR]

There is a famous saying:- "You Can Lead a Horse to Water, but You Can't Make Him Drink"

Same case with some delusional PDF pakistani's who are still in denial and will remain so (knowingly)

And we all know Why!!

 

[Cherokee]

The Dawn is Paid By CIA/Mossad/RAW/KHAD/Annunakis/Martians/Neptunians etc all to Malign Great Nation of Pakistan .

Don't you know this ??

 

[T90TankGuy]

What does it matter if they believe that he is a Pakistani or not . the world believes it , that enough . let them live in denial.

 

[Rajputana]

Whats new in Pakistanis denying their own, they even refuse to accept their dead soldiers in war.

This was probably more of an inconvenience than dead soldiers. Apparently Pakistanis are too useless for their own country to be accepted back.

 

[sexy gun]

atleast kasab would be eligible for a marked grave unlike their dead soldiers in Kashmir

 

[Amolthebest]

History repeats. So not accepting their citizen's deadbody

 

[sexy gun]

History repeats. So not accepting their citizen's deadbody

History ??? it's a fcuking trend LOL !!

 

[Mirza Jatt]

Nice...the more they live in denial the deeper they dig their grave for future.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Not sure why his nationality matters.

Terrorists are the bastard children of a dying ideology (terrorism), they don't care about nations or humanity or anything else.

 

[sexy gun]

Not sure why his nationality matters.

Terrorists are the bastard children of a dying ideology (terrorism), they don't care about nations or humanity or anything else.

Yeah and after pakistan FM accepting Kasab as pakistani, this thread is meaningless!!

 

[Rajaraja Chola]

India is a crude nation.. We killed Kasab, who helped stage our own drama, !! RIP Kasab

 

[third eye]

Kasab, Indian double standards and his confession

Kasab, Indian double standards and his confession - thenews.com.pk


LAHORE: Ajmal Kasab, the Pakistan-born sole surviving Mumbai attacker who was sent to gallows on November 21 in Pune, was in fact a street criminal who had joined the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) while looking around to buy weapons to commit robberies.

Ironically, or exposing the Indian duplicity, the day Kasab was hanged to death, India had voted against a United Nations General Assembly resolution that called for abolishing the death penalty.

Kasab was the second person to have been hanged across India over the past 15 years. Before him, a former security guard was hanged in 2004 for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old school girl. Kasab, who had no last wishes before being hanged, was a resident of the Faridkot area in the Okara district of Punjab and was amongst the 10 Pakistani militants who had sneaked into Mumbai on the night of November 26, 2008, letting lose a reign of terror and killing 166 people.

Even though Pakistan partially admitted that the Mumbai attacks were planned partly on its soil, it denied any official involvement. During hearing of the case, Kasab initially pleaded not guilty but later confessed, admitting that he was one of the gunmen who had been trained to Mumbai by the chief operational commander of the Lashkar, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi.

The seven Pakistani plotters behind the 26 Mumbai attacks, including Kasab’s handler Lakhvi, are already being tried by an Anti Terrorism Court inside the premises of the Adiala Iail, Rawalpindi. In his first confessional statement given to the Crime Branch of the Mumbai Police in 2009 and shared with the Pakistani authorities by their Indian counterparts, Kasab had described his conversion from an aspiring street criminal to a loyal soldier for LeT.

Kasab said in his confessional statement: “I had been residing in Faridkot since my birth and studied up to class IV in a government school there. In year 2000, however, I left the school and went to stay with my brother near Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore. I worked as a labourer at various places till 2005, visiting my native place once in a while. One day, a person named Shafiq came there and took me with him.

He was from Jhelum and had a catering business. I started working for him for Rs120 per day. Later, my salary was increased to Rs200 a day. I worked with him till 2007. While working with Shafiq, I came in contact with Muzaffar Lal Khan. Since we were not getting enough money, we decided to carry out robberies to make big money. So we quit the job and went to Rawalpindi, where we rented a flat. Afzal had located a house for us to loot. We required some firearms for our mission. While we were in search of firearms, we saw some Lashkar-e-Toiba stalls at Raja Bazaar in Rawalpindi on the day of Eidul Azha. We then realised that even if we procure firearms, we would not be able to operate them. Therefore, we decided to join LeT for weapons training”.

“We reached the LeT office and told a person there we wanted to join the LeT. He noted down our names and addresses and directed us come the next day. The next day, there was another person with him. He gave us Rs200 and some receipts. Then he gave us the address of a place called Markaz-e-Toiba, Muridke, and told us to go to there. It was a LeT training camp. We went to the place by bus and showed the receipts at the gate of the camp. We were allowed inside. Then we were taken to the actual camp area. Initially, we were selected for a 21-day training course called Daura Aam. From the next day, our training started. After Daura Aam, we were selected for another training programme which was also for 21 days. We were taken to Mansehra in Buttal village, where we were trained in handling weapons”.

“After that, we were told that we will begin the next stage involving advanced training. We were taken to a LeT camp in Shawai Nullah near Muzaffarabad for advanced training... We were then taken to Chela Bandi Pahari area for a training programme, called Daura Khaas, of three months. It involved handling weapons, using hand grenades, rocket launchers and mortars.

There were 32 trainees in the camp, of which 16 were selected for a confidential operation by one Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi alias Chacha. But three of them ran away from the camp. Chacha sent the remaining 13 with a person called Kafa to the Muridke camp again. At Muridke camp, we were taught swimming and made familiar with the life of fishermen at sea. We were given lectures on the working of Indian security agencies. We were shown clippings highlighting atrocities on Muslims in India. After the training, we were allowed to go to our native places. I stayed with my family for seven days. I then went to the LeT camp at Muzaffarabad”.

“After the training, Chacha selected 10 of us and formed five teams of two people each on September 15. The date fixed for the operation was 27 September [2008]. But the operation was cancelled for some reason. We stayed in Karachi till 23 November and then left from Azizabad in Karachi, along with Zaki and Kafa. We were taken to the nearby seashore. We boarded a launch. After travelling for 22 to 25 nautical miles we boarded a bigger launch. Again, after a journey of an hour, we boarded a ship, Al-Huseini, on the high seas. While boarding the ship, each of us was given a sack containing eight grenades, an AK-47 rifle, 200 cartridges, two magazines and a cell phone”.

“Then we started towards the Indian coast. When we reached Indian waters, the crew members of Al-Huseini hijacked an Indian launch. The crew of the launch was shifted to Al-Huseini. We then boarded the launch. An Indian seaman was made to accompany us at gunpoint; he was made to bring us to the Indian coast. After a journey of three days, we reached near Mumbai’s shore. While we were still some distance away from the shore, Ismail and Asadullah killed the Indian seaman in the basement of the launch. Then we boarded an inflatable dinghy and reached Badhwar Park jetty”.

“I then went along with Ismail to VT station [in Mumbai] by taxi. After reaching the hall of the station, we went to the toilet, took out the weapons from our sacks, loaded them, came out of the toilet and started firing indiscriminately at passengers. Suddenly, a police officer opened fire at us. We threw hand grenades towards him and opened fire at him. Then we went inside the station threatening the commuters and randomly firing at them. We then came out of the railway station searching for a building with a roof. But we did not find one. Therefore, we entered a lane. We entered a building and went upstairs. On the third and fourth floors we searched for hostages but we found that the building was a hospital and not a residential building. We started to come down. That is when policemen started firing at us. We threw grenades at them…”

“A bullet hit my hand and my AK-47 fell out of my hand. When I bent to pick it up another bullet hit me on the same hand… Ismail was injured in the firing too. The police removed us from the vehicle and took us to a hospital where I came to know that Ismail had succumbed to injuries. My statement has been read to me and explained and it has been correctly recorded”, Ajmal Kasab’s confessional account concluded.

Nevertheless, when the trial of the 26/11 accused was formally initiated on April 17, 2009, Kasab pleaded not guilty and sought retraction of his confessional statement. But almost three months later, on July 20, 2009, Kasab had stunned everybody in the Mumbai courtroom by making a surprise guilty plea, admitting his role in the three-day Mumbai rampage, which eventually led to his hanging on November 21.

 

[third eye]

The unending Faridkot mystery | DAWN.COM

LAHORE: Ajmal Kasab, the ‘baby-faced butcher’, arrived on the scene in November 2008 and even though he was executed in a Pune jail about four years later on Wednesday, his image and his stereotype threatens to live on without being fully probed.

The criminal investigation or a lack of it apart, no serious study to understand his coming about has yet been undertaken and none is likely if the conventional and convenient methods of investigation continue to be obsessively applied.

Ajmal Kasab was the lone survivor among the 10 Mumbai attackers. In late November 2008 intelligence leaks to Indian media claimed he was a Pakistani hailing from a village named Faridkot. A search was launched by media in Pakistan and many Faridkots beckoned out of their unnoticed existence on the map. Finally, after a series of blanks, a tip from Okara in central Punjab said Ajmal Kasab’s family might be living in Faridkot village bang on the Kasur-Depalpur road, not far from Depalpur town.

An investigation by a Dawn reporter confirmed that Amir Kasab, identified by Indian media as the father of Ajmal, had indeed settled in Faridkot many years ago after arriving from nearby Haveli Lakha, and that among his children was a son who had left home some time ago.

Two Dawn journalists arrived in a neat-looking Faridkot lane in the first week of December, 2008. They were looking for the Kasab home and were met on the way by a man of medium build, clad in shalwar kameez. “Do you know someone from the Kasab family? Are they home?,” the man was asked.

“I am Kasab,” he replied. Then quickly and mechanically, he took out his identity card from his chest pocket, as if he had kept it handy for an impending identification. “Amir Kasab,” the card read.

In a few seconds, the journalists were inside Amir Kasab’s house. A pale-eyed woman sat on a charpoy, introduced to the visitors as Ajmal’s mother. Two younger women who stood by were identified as Ajmal’s sisters. Also around and visibly intrigued by the visit was a young boy in winter school uniform. He was said to be Ajmal’s younger brother.

A few hours earlier, the same journalists had found the details in the Indian media’s breaking stories on Ajmal Kasab a bit too difficult to stomach — an example of how intelligence agencies used media to forward their own interests, how too much information gave a story-teller away. It was a story they were desperate to disprove, ready to suffer the embarrassment that awaits pursuers at the end chasing a red herring. In these stories, the attacker was painted as a poor runaway boy who, after wandering through Lahore, had met his ****** handlers in Rawalpindi. However, in the poor and well-kempt courtyard of the Kasab family that afternoon, the probing journalists found some striking similarities between their surroundings and the bits reported in Indian media accounts of Ajmal’s confessions.

The reports said Amir Kasab was a snacks-seller in Faridkot, and now a handcart stood in one corner of the yard, stacked with steel plates and glasses washed and ready to serve. Amir said he sold pakoras in the village, a collection of quite spacious brick-houses against a background of richly cultivated fields and smoke-emitting factories that had been under-projected in the media leaks.

Much more devastating, the master of the house admitted the pictures flashed in media were his son’s. “Initially, I did not own up to this. But now I know that this is my son,” he said.

Then he sobbed and his wife’s face disappeared in the chador she had on her. The younger lot of the family looked on, as did the small crowd that had gathered inside the house, probably neighbours not all of whom were comfortable with the content of the unfolding conversation.

There were a few points which Amir Kasab adamantly denied. The media had implied that he had taken money against Ajmal’s services to the ‘handlers’ of the Mumbai attack — an accusation that has been repeated after the execution now. “He had asked me to buy Eid clothes for him. When I refused he got angry and left,” Amir’s simple explanation said.

That was apparently the only exchange between the Kasab family of Faridkot near Depalpur and the media. Over the following hours, the village was besieged by journalists faced by a local nazim and his men determined to prevent any further prying into their lives, even if it required manhandling the nosey journalists.

One reporter working with a British paper located the Kasab name on an electoral roll. Yet, no clue was available to the whereabouts of Amir Kasab and his family. They had simply vanished from the scene.

The first reaction in Pakistan back then was to disown Ajmal Kasab. Now, amid a debate as to who should claim his body, people in Faridkot are still reluctant to admit he belonged to their village. It needed some persuasion before a couple of them shared a few bits of information with Dawn on Wednesday.

One villager said Amir Kasab and his wife had briefly been in Faridkot a few times. From among those who did acknowledge the Kasabs had once been Faridkot residents told Dawn their house had since been “rented out”. The current occupants say they have been living there for three and a half years.

The house looks the same as it did in December 2008, but an animal shed has since taken up some part of the courtyard.

The advice given by elders to the locals has been to not discuss Ajmal Kasab with anyone. A local imam masjid reportedly used the mosque’s loudspeaker to tell his audience to stay away from the affair. It is this shield of silence that greeted journalists in Faridkot as they converged on the village again looking for stories to mark Ajmal Kasab’s hanging in distant Pune.

In the days following the Faridkot revelation in 2008, Pakistan and India remained locked in a tense exchange over the identity and origins of the Mumbai attackers. Pakistan was initially reluctant to admit that Ajmal was its national as the Indian side demanded action against the “Pakistan-based” perpetrators of the terrorist act.

Then, on Dec 10, 2008, Mahmood Durrani, adviser to the prime minister, did finally accept that Ajmal was a Pakistani citizen — a disclosure that cost Durrani his job. Around the same time, PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif told journalist Kim Barker of evidence which suggested that Ajmal did indeed belong to Faridkot. As the facts emerged, in time, Islamabad did shift from an outright denial to insisting on a distinction between the “state actors” and “non-state” actors, under pressure from India and the West to investigate and try Lashkar-e-Taiba men accused of masterminding Mumbai attacks.

Away from the trials and governmental standoffs, the phenomenon called Ajmal Kasab has received but only superficial attention and that too by and large from journalists working by short deadlines. The prosperous fields, the smoke-emitting mills and Amir Kasab’s own not-so-poor status have not prevented observers from looking at it from the classical poverty angle.

There is a book written by an Indian journalist which “dedicates several chapters to highlighting the Pakistani paradoxes that gave birth to Ajmal the terrorist” placing Faridkot “in an imaginary terrain existing at a distance from… civilisation”.

Task done? No need to explore any further and find out other linkages between Ajmal Kasab and his act, reasons such as enshrined in the thesis about clash between civilisations? It is this single-track approach that lends greater mystery to the affair, in the name of simplified reading and where discussion is stunted and an earnest probe is put on hold, denial comes easy. In the hush-hush of whispers Faridkot remains largely undiscovered beneath a pile of nationalist to administrative to faith-based excuses.

 

[airmarshal]

But within minutes of the revelation, confusing, and somewhat conflicting, statements started emanating from different sections of the government in Islamabad. While the Indian television channel CNN-IBN quoted Pakistan`s National Security Adviser Mehmud Ali Durrani as saying that Ajmal Kasab`s identity as a Pakistani had been established, Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir told the same channel that it was premature to say anything because the investigation was continuing.

This is the exact contradiction of this govt. It says one thing and then backtracks. It does that all the time with its own people. Not only this govt. is corrupt but also coward and liar.

Pakistanis dont trust anything when Indians say it. But the confusion for us that our govt is not at all credible. they did the exact same thing in Raymond Davis case. he was never a diplomat but a contractor at the US embassy. But our fearful govt. never said that in public.

Look what they are doing to terrorism. In statements they are against it but dont seem to be taking any action on the ground.

If the govt in Pakistan can take a stand, this way or that way, Pakistanis will not be confused.

On the topic. Its no shame if Kasab nationality is established. Indian establishment did its best to link him to Pakistani state. They failed. But we do have Indian RAW agents in our jails, sponsored by Indian state to commit terrorism in Pakistan.