All 10 terrorists were runaways

The conspirators of 26/11 belonging to the LeT had allegedly selected only such attackers who had either abandoned their families or barely maintained any ties with them, Amir Kasab said, reports Abhishek Sharan.

The conspirators of 26/11 belonging to the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) had allegedly selected only such attackers who had either abandoned their families or barely maintained any ties with them, Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab has told his interrogators.

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This was done to ensure that the attackers who underwent a nearly a year-long training at Lashkar’s Pakistan-based terror camps would neither leak any “operations secrets” nor refuse to undertake suicide attacks, Kasab, the lone LeT attacker in custody of the Mumbai police, told crime branch officials.

Confirming this to HT, crime branch chief and JCP Rakesh Maria said: “Kasab told us that he and his nine other associates had the same personal background. Like him, those selected had all run away from their families.”

Maria added: “These attackers were men who had been trained thoroughly to devote their life completely to the Lashkar and its terror activities.”

Though, the 10 men had got a week each to go where they wanted before the attacks their trainers had the confidence in them to bar them from visiting their homes since they knew would not, he said.

When asked if the attackers had penned or recorded their last messages before the attack, which was supposedly a suicide mission, Maria said: “No, they did not. They were from broken families mostly. After the final instructions were issued in Karachi, Kasab and the others were just asked to hug each other and wish luck.”

A senior crime branch officer, requesting anonymity, said that usually before a suicide attack, “terror operatives, belonging to groups like the Al Qaeda and allied outfits, or even the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE), record their final message before a camera that is later used as a propaganda/motivational tool... It is unusual that the Lashkar team did not.”

Maria said: “May be they have a code according to which their suicide bombers record a final message, but suicide attackers do not. The Lashkar men who came here were suicide attackers.”