India: Pakistan Controlled Mumbai Gunmen

Phone Transcripts Prove Deadly Attacks Were Launched From Across Border, Officials Say

(CBS/AP)  "We have three foreigners, including women," the gunman said into the phone.

The response was brutally simple: "Kill them." Gunshots then rang out inside the Mumbai hotel, followed by cheering that could be heard over the phone.

The ruthless exchange comes from a transcript of phone calls Indian authorities say they intercepted during the November Mumbai attacks. They were part of a dossier of evidence New Delhi handed Pakistan this week that it says definitively proves that the siege was launched from across the border.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Tuesday that he did not believe the gunmen were acting alone, and Pakistani state agencies must have had a hand in the attacks.

The dossier made no mention of any Pakistani officials or agencies.

Pakistani authorities are reviewing the evidence but have dismissed Singh's claims. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani accused India of waging a "media and diplomatic offensive against Pakistan."

"It is clearly unhelpful to any serious and objective investigations and amounts to unnecessarily whipping up tensions in South Asia," Gilani said.

But Pakistani Information Minister Sherry Rehman did say Wednesday that the lone surviving gunman was a Pakistani citizen, after weeks of refusing to confirm Delhi's claims, and after another official leaked that information to Pakistani media. Islamabad had previously said it could not find Ajmal Kasab - the only one of 10 not killed as commandos ended the siege - in its databases.

Just hours after Pakistani media broadcast claims from an unnamed senior official that said Kasab was from Pakistan, the nation's prime minister sacked his top national security adviser, reports CBS News' Farhan Bokhari.

A senior Pakistani government official who spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity confirmed that Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani fired (Ret.) Major General Mehmood Durrani, the national security adviser, after he was found to be the source of the information leaked on the citizenship of Ajmal Kasab. “He (Durrani) spoke out of turn. Clearly he was not authorized to speak in this way.”

Indian leaders have made clear they do not want a military conflict with Pakistan, and Pakistan's intelligence chief said there will be no war over the Mumbai attacks.

"We may be crazy in Pakistan, but not completely out of our minds," Pakistan's intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shujaa Pasha, told German news magazine Der Spiegel. "We know full well that terror is our enemy, not India."

Predominantly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan have fought three wars against each other since they gained independence in 1947.

The Mumbai transcripts, which were translated into English by Indian authorities and obtained by the newspaper The Hindu, show that the gunmen who carried out the attacks were in close contact with their handlers throughout the siege. India says the handlers directing the attacks that left 164 dead were senior leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group.

The handlers told a team of gunmen who had seized a Jewish center to shoot hostages if necessary.

"If you are still threatened, then don't saddle yourself with the burden of the hostages. Immediately kill them," he said.

Six Jewish foreigners, including a rabbi and his wife, were killed inside the Jewish center.

Later in the night, nearly 24 hours after the attacks began, the handlers urged the gunmen to "be strong in the name of Allah"

"Brother, you have to fight. This is a matter of prestige of Islam," the handler said. "You may feel tired or sleepy, but the commandos of Islam have left everything behind, their mothers, their fathers."

The gunmen were told several times not to kill any Muslim hostages.

The attackers used several different mobile phones, including those belonging to the hostages. Shortly after the siege began, Indian authorities say they began intercepting calls from inside the hotel. They were also able to pick up calls carried over the Internet, which the handlers used to route some calls, according to the dossier.

The siege lasted nearly three days, far longer than security experts said it should have, and, apparently, far longer than the terrorists expected as well. The handlers told the gunmen on Nov. 27 that "the operation has to be concluded tomorrow morning." But it was 36 more hours before it finished.

Much of the dialogue has a teacher-student dynamic, and indeed, the surviving gunman has said he and the rest of the group were trained by Lashkar in Pakistan.

"We made a big mistake," one of the gunman says into the phone in the early hours of the siege.

"What big mistake?"

"When we were getting into the boat ... another boat came. Everyone jumped quickly. In this confusion, the satellite phone of Ismail got left behind." The investigation shows the gunmen entered Mumbai, which sits on the Arabian sea, by a rubber dinghy.

The attacks against iconic Mumbai targets were covered nonstop by news channels around the world. The handlers used the TV reports to guide the gunmen, the dossier says, including warning when commandos roped down to the Jewish center from helicopters.

The dossier included photographs of dozens of items recovered in the attacks, including GPS units, mobile phones, guns, and explosives, as well as data gleaned from satellite phones, and details from the interrogation of the lone surviving gunman.

It also had pictures of more mundane items India calls incriminating because they were made in Pakistan, including pickles, detergent, a match box, tissue paper, a Mountain Dew bottle, shaving cream and a towel.

But the strongest - and most chilling - evidence that the gunmen were not acting alone came from the phone transcripts.

"Keep your phone switched on," a handler said in the midst of the siege, "so that we can hear the gunfire."

[antoniof123]

Wow, so they have phone records and that will do what. If they have already dismissed this then it will do nothing.

I think that if the Muslims don''t take a stand to stop this nonsense. They are going to find out the hard way themselves.

[toolmangler-2009]

did the voice on the phone have a Texas accent?

[dooney8]

India should bomb them to peices. It would solve the Afgan prblem too.

[proudkafir]

1st they deny kasab is a Pak citizen..then now their minister admits...long before their tv channel-"GeoTV" has shown interview of kasab''s parents & UK''s "Guardian" has seen his family names on the local voter list...yet relentless hiding had been on...lies behind so many lies?? & what is alla made to do in the middle of all these lies & murders???
well think about the daily headlines quoted in western media about some Pak official or the other denying Mumbai involvement + empty threats towards India..surely pak mast be paying huge sum to the Washington Anglo-Jewish controlled lobbyists to daily boost up the p.r. to somehow wash its image....so wretched really..
its a shame the Pakists curse the Jewish cause & its everything on the outside while rubbing shoulders on the inside to do biz..so hypocritical;
no wonder Pak is termed by all as a failed ,hot-air-bag,good-4-nothing state

[gangesdak]

Even today there are people in the US who do not believe that holocaust against the Jews really happened. Considering that it is no wonder that Pakistan will be able to convince US and others that Mumbai massacre has nothing to do with Pakistan.

[clathrate]

Posted by J_Mack5:

You will recall that Indira Ghandi is not much liked by anyone with a brain in India. There is a d@mn good reason the Sikhs assassinated that psycho biyotch.

Today, we have a nation that thinks it will somehow survive as a democracy if they just keep placating the Taliban. Ironically, Pakistan is only hastening the day that it falls and becomes another Taliban coup state like Afghanistan.

Hopefully that day happens with a President in power with the balls to attack and kill the Taliban instead of pleading with them.

[clathrate]

Dear China:

Why in bloody hell are you idiots friends with a Muslim scourge? You laready have Mossy problems aplenty. Oh sure, it''s real fun to watch the mean dog bite the other guy, but pretty soon, the mean dog is coming after you. When your azz gets bit, China, we are all going to laugh at your dumb azz and tell you "we told you so!".

China = Pakistan = terrorist nation.

[j_mack5]

Google "India LTTE Terrorists Tamil Nadu" to learn about India''s support for terror.

As you know, India has helped terrorists setup shop on Indian soil and launch deadly attacks against its neighbors.
When the LTTE Terrorists were in their infancy in the 80''s, the first terrorist training camps were based in Tamil Nadu, India. Weapons to arm this viscous terror group were supplied by Tamils living there and funded by Tamils worldwide. The Indian government headed by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the state of Tamil Nadu did nothing to stop this. Later, Indira Gandhi''s only surviving son, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by the LTTE while campaigning in the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu! You may Google for "Rajiv Gandhi assassination LTTE". Would it surprise you that Tamil political parties in India helped the LTTE Terrorists with this assassination? Later, the LTTE training camps were moved to Sri Lanka while logistical and political support for terror remained in Tamil Nadu. Today, this Tamil homeland in India is used extensively as an illegal arms smuggling base to terrorists in Sri Lanka by the Tamils and is a hive for ethnic hatred. In October, 2008, the LTTE Terrorists thanked the Tamil Nadu government in India for their attempts to spread false propaganda to stop the military campaign to liberate LTTE held areas.

Let us not forget the Golden Rule: "Do not do unto others what you would not want them do unto you".