Mumbai 26/11 verdict: Why Qassab matters
The
public trial and provision of legal defence for Qassab enhanced the reputation
and credibility of the Indian judicial system and further disclosed to our
eternal pride that there were victims and bereaved who were prepared to forgive
him. But the overwhelming popular indignation and feeling of revenge is quite
understandable, and is to be expected. It is also an unacknow-ledged tribute to
the Indian system that Pakistanis want Indian judicial officials to give
evidence in the in-camera Pakistani trial of the LeT handlers for the Mumbai
attack. The contrast between the mature Indian democracy and the incipient
Pakistani system could not have been better brought out, with the open trial in
India and the closed trial in Pakistan…..
The
image of Qassab with his AK-47 at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus will haunt
for a long time to come. 26/11 in the longer run may have a more significant
impact on our security thinking than the 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999 wars with
Pakistan. -- K. Subrahmanyam
By K. Subrahmanyam
May 04, 2010
Unlike
in the 9/11 case, where no perpetrator of the crime survived or was captured, in
the 26/11 case of the Lashkar-e-Toiba operating from Pakistani soil, one
terrorist named Ajmal Amir Qassab was captured alive and lived to tell the tale.
The only survivor among the 10 assailants sent on the mission, he was put on
trial and that was completed in little over 18 months. While there are many
conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attack and the collapse of the twin towers of
the World Trade Centre, in the case of the 26/11 attack attempts to attribute it
to locals initially tried by Pakistan collapsed in the light of Kasab’s
production in the court and the detailed judicial confession he
offered.
This
left Pakistani officials no room to dodge and they had to accept that the
terrorist conspiracy was hatched on Pakistani soil by their nationals belonging
to the LeT. This was also a unique case in which the conversations between the
terrorist handlers in Pakistan and the terrorists in action in the streets of
Mumbai were recorded by more than one country through the monitoring of mobile
telephone conversations in real time. That clinched the evidence against the LeT
operating from Pakistan. Since the casualties included a number of Americans and
Israelis, and the monitored conversations disclosed the virulent anti-Jewish and
anti-US hatred of the Pakistani terrorist handlers, the US was compelled to
change the earlier attitude of treating the LeT as a terrorist organisation
relevant for anti-Kashmiri operations only. The American double agent David
Coleman Headley’s confession completed the picture in respect of the role and
scope of the LeT. No doubt the Americans considered it sufficiently dangerous
from 2002 to have attempted to use Headley to penetrate the organisation.
Presumably the Mumbai attack compelled them to categorise it as one of the five
organisations which had to be disrupted, dismantled and
defeated.
Unlike
the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed plotter of 9/11 who had
to be subjected to water-boarding torture to extract information, Kasab, a man
of limited education, confessed voluntarily initially, though he tried to go
back on it with some very fanciful tale of a double being used. Kasab’s capture
and confession established that the façade of a civilian government in Pakistan
did not in any way affect the autonomy of the army and the Inter Services
Intelligence to function as sponsors of terrorism. This has been further
confirmed by the UN panel’s report on the assassination of Benazir
Bhutto.
The
public trial and provision of legal defence for Qassab enhanced the reputation
and credibility of the Indian judicial system and further disclosed to our
eternal pride that there were victims and bereaved who were prepared to forgive
him. But the overwhelming popular indignation and feeling of revenge is quite
understandable, and is to be expected. It is also an unacknow-ledged tribute to
the Indian system that Pakistanis want Indian judicial officials to give
evidence in the in-camera Pakistani trial of the LeT handlers for the Mumbai
attack. The contrast between the mature Indian democracy and the incipient
Pakistani system could not have been better brought out, with the open trial in
India and the closed trial in Pakistan.
The
Mumbai attack showed the crucial importance of communication intelligence as a
tool of intelligence and even of criminal investigation. The recent common alert
issued by India, the US, the UK, Canada and Australia on an impending attack on
Delhi was made possible by the same technology. That capability needs to be
expanded several-fold if Indian security is to be adequately strengthened. The
deployment of this capability should be somewhat of a deterrent to terrorists,
money launderers, organised crime bosses, arms and drug smugglers and their
political and bureaucratic patrons.
HBO had
a broadcast on the Mumbai attack, especially the conversations between the
handlers and the terrorists; it needs wider publicity. There will be questions
about a death penalty for Qassab and its execution. There will be people who
will argue that execution is not punishment commensurate with his crime and he
should be made to live with the horror of what he had done every day for years
to come. While he showed some remorse at one stage of his trial, of late he has
gone back on his earlier statements and come out with fanciful accounts of his
being an innocent tourist framed by the Mumbai police. That does not indicate
much of remorse. There is a good case to subject him to psychoanalysis to learn
more about the brainwashing programmes of LeT. That is no doubt routinely done
for captured terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir. But this is a special case of a
convicted prisoner and may need judicial clearance.
Qassab
and his fellow terrorists shook the Indian internal security system to its
foundation. The Union home minister, the chief minister and home minister of
Maharashtra had to resign. Very significant reforms were carried out in respect
of internal security intelligence and the response mechanism to terrorist
attacks. But there have been legitimate complaints that 26/11 was not followed
by an analogue of the American 9/11 commission and the internal security reforms
were not as far-reaching as they were in the US. In fact the Indian follow-up
analysis of 26/11 was much slower and much less insightful than those carried
out by the RAND Corporation and New York Police Department of the same event.
The Indian effort to reform the internal security system is still a work in
progress. 26/11 brought the Indian and US intelligence establishments much
closer, and information-sharing on real time basis began and has progressed
since then. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has acknowledged that India
and the US face a common threat and need a common strategy. The alert of April
30 about an impending threat to Delhi is a public demonstration of American
involvement in monitoring terrorist threats to India.
The
image of Qassab with his AK-47 at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus will haunt
for a long time to come. 26/11 in the longer run may have a more significant
impact on our security thinking than the 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999 wars with
Pakistan.
The writer is a senior defence analyst
Source: The Indian Express, New Delhi
10:43 PM
Sultan Shahin
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