Elaborate telecom facilities set up in Karachi control room

Terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba had employed elaborate communication resources in its Karachi control room to stay in touch with the 10 Mumbai attackers, sources have revealed.

On the Pakistani side, Iftikhar Ali, an LeT operative from Faisalabad, had instructed two Islamabad-based persons – Mohammad Nawaj Naji and Shahzada Khan – to make a payment of $250 to Callphonex for procuring VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) connections.

Pakistan has informed India that Iftikhar Ali is absconding.

Another payment was made by one Javed Iqbal in Italy, who stated that though his identity was used, but he has no links with LeT. The operatives had opened the accounts in the name of Kharak Singh of India to cover their tracks. The VoIP connections were installed in four laptops by LeT handlers, to be used in the LeT control room.

According to evidence received from Pakistan on the 26/11 attacks and documents filed by Mumbai police in court, LeT operatives had created 15 computer-to-phone accounts (numbers of 40000000 to 40000014), 10 common client accounts (numbers 31000000 to 31000009) and five direct inward dialing (DID) Austrian numbers (4320880764 to 43720880768).

The five DID lines were connected to an equal number of computer-to-phone accounts (number 40000000 to 40000004). The five Austrian DID numbers were programmed to connect directly to computer-to-phone account numbers. “Such an elaborate arrangement can be made only with the help of state actors in Pakistan,” said a security source.

The session’s court judgment in the trial against lone attacker Amir Ajmal Kasab also dwelt on the issue. The judgment stated that the VoIP service allows one to make and receive telephone calls between any computer to computer, computer to telephone, and telephone to telephone, through the Internet. But a DID number allows public telephones networks to connect with a VoIP account.