By IANS,
Islamabad : The banned Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami (HuJI), which operates out of Bangladesh, may have played a role in the Mumbai terror strike, Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has stated.
The FIA’s investigation report, which will be shared soon with India, has a reference to HuJI’s role in planning the November Mumbai killings and the training of the terrorists.
The report is likely to indicate that the Mumbai attack was the handiwork of an “international network of Muslim fundamentalists” in South Asia spreading all the way to the Middle East, The Dawn reported Thursday.
“Although contents of the report are being kept a tightly-guarded secret by the interior ministry, sources privy to it say it would emphasise that the Mumbai incident is not strictly a Pakistan-India issue,” the daily said.
The report went on to say that the investigators were probing if at least one of the Mumbai attackers was of Bangladesh origin.
A senior Western diplomat told the paper that there was a strong possibility that one of the attackers was indeed a Bangladeshi national.
Some 170 people were slaughtered in the Nov 26-29 Mumbai mayhem when 10 terrorists who India says were Pakistanis sneaked into the city by sea and went on a killing spree.
On Jan 30, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Britain Wajid Shamsul Hasan had said the Mumbai terror attacks of 26/11 were planned in a “third place” — outside Pakistan and Britain.
Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving gunman involved in the Mumbai attacks, was of Pakistani origin.
Pakistani investigators believe it would have been almost impossible to plan and execute an attack of this proportion and sophistication without local Indian support.
The two sets of questions given to India by Pakistan also touched upon this aspect, the Dawn said.
India has responded to only one set and that too through the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, while the reply to the second set of questions is awaited, the Dawn quoted sources as saying.
The investigators also suggest that the attack may be remotely linked to Al Qaeda’s terror network.