Author: Press Trust of India
Publication: NDTV.com
Date: September 7, 2011
URL: http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/wikileaks-us-knew-of-isis-terror-designs-tie-ups-with-tiger-memon-132069
American officials knew for a very long time
that the ISI had created various terrorist groups, including those based out
from Nepal, to carry out attacks in India including the 1996 Lajpat Nagar
blast, according to the latest US cables released by Wikileaks.
The US cables clearly show that Americans
also knew that Tiger Memon, the prime accused in 1993 Mumbai blast case and
an aide of global terrorist Dawood Ibrahim, had tied up with the ISI.
In these cables, US officials say that it
is the ISI which created various terrorist fronts to carry out terror activities
in India, including the bomb blasts in the busy areas of Connaught Place,
Lajpat Nagar in New Delhi and several cities across the country.
One of such organisation created by ISI in
Pakistan was Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Front (JKIF), with its main base in
Kathmandu, Nepal.
"To dispatch men and material and to
execute explosions in India, Kathmandu was invariably made the nodal point
and JKIF exploited the vulnerable Kathmandu-based Kashmiri businessmen for
such activities since they had a ready-made and clean past.
JKIF kingpin Javed Krawah himself used to
run a carpet business in Kathmandu," said the US cable signed off by
none other than the then US Ambassador to India, Frank Wisner.
JKIF, says the cable dated July 8, 1997, was
controlled from Pakistan by ISI and Memon.
"Their contact in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir
was Bilal Beg, who was running an indoctrination camp near Muzaffarabad, funded
extensively by the ISI to carry out terrorist acts in India.
One Colonel Farooq of Pakistan ISI tasked
Bilal Beg and Tiger Memon to utilize Kathmandu-based activists Lateef and
Javed Krawah to set off blasts in Delhi before the Lok Sabha elections,"
it said.
In May 21, 1996; this JKIF team set off a
very high intensity explosion at Lajpat Nagar in which 13 persons were killed
and 40 injured.
"The RDX used in this blast was brought
from Kathmandu," the cable said.
The subsequent explosion in a Rajasthan roadways
bus near Dausa on May 22, 1996 was also engineers by the JKIF.
"Another JKIF team under the leadership
of Abdul Gani, AKA Assadullah, was sent to execute a bomb blast in Ahmedabad,"
it said.
JKIF again planned a chain of explosions in
Delhi before Republic Day 1997 at the behest of Pakistan ISI and Tiger Memon,
the cable said.
Since its inception, the JKIF had been under
considerable pressure from its Pakistan-based leadership to carry out bomb
blasts outside J&K, particularly in Delhi, the cable said.
