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Mumbai Raids

India Demands 20 'Fugitives' from Pakistan

India claims mounting evidence shows a Pakistani link to the Mumbai terrorist raid. It has asked Pakistan, as a show of cooperation, for 20 fugitives already sought by Indian law enforcement. One is an Indian-born underworld boss wanted for previous acts of terrorism.

As relations deteriorate between India and Pakistan after last week's terrorist siege of Mumbai, the government in New Delhi summoned Pakistan's ambassador on Monday to formally complain that "elements from Pakistan" had been involved. The government also demanded that Islamabad turn over 20 fugitives from Indian law who, it said, were at large in Pakistan.

"We have in our demarche asked for the arrest and handover of those persons who are settled in Pakistan and who are fugitive of Indian law," said Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee in New Delhi on Tuesday, Reuters reported.

Pakistan said it needed time to review the list. "We have to look at it formally once we get it and we will frame a response," said Information Minister Sherry Rehman in Islamabad, also according to Reuters.

Two names that topped the list were Dawood Ibrahim, an organized crime figure suspected of organizing a series of Mumbai bomb attacks in 1993, and Maulana Masood Azhar, a Pakistani Muslim cleric and suspected terrorist who was freed by India in exchange for the release of hostages in an Indian Airlines hijacking in 1999.

The 13 bomb attacks in 1993 are considered the start of an ongoing problem with terrorism in India by its own Muslim minority. The bombings are also considered a response to anti-Muslim riots in Mumbai in late 1992 and 1993.

Dawood Ibrahim is an Indian-born mob boss who, according to U.S. News and World Report, lives in Karachi under the protection of Pakistan's intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI. He's believed by American and Indian officials to have links with coastal smuggling in Pakistan as well as the Kashmiri militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. The group is suspected of having had a hand in last week's Mumbai attacks.

Trained Terrorists, Full of Cocaine and Steroids

But India's government has not fixed specific blame for last week's attacks. The message to the Pakistani ambassador on Monday was simply that India expected "strong action" from Pakistan "against those elements, whosoever they may be, responsible for this outrage."

The commando-style raids of several locations around Mumbai involved 10 well-trained gunmen who killed a total of 173 people with grenades and semi-automatic weapons. The Telegraph in Britain reported on Tuesday that some of the gunmen's bodies had traces of steroids and cocaine, which "explains why they managed to battle (Indian) commandos for over 50 hours with no food or sleep," according to an Indian official who went unnamed by the paper.

The one surviving gunman, Azam Amir Qasab, is from Pakistan and linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, according to reports in the Indian media. The group has denied involvement, but India's Deputy Home Minister Shakeel Ahmad said it had been "very clearly established" that all the attackers were from Pakistan.

The new Pakistani Prime Minister, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, said his government "would itself take action against the miscreants if there is any evidence against a Pakistani national." But India and the US were pressing Pakistan for more cooperation.

A British military officer said in a speech on Monday that the terrorists' nationality was less important than continued pressure on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, a largely lawless region where many groups have terrorist training camps. Pakistan has warned that it would move troops from that region towards India if it felt threatened by new hostilities.

"If tensions between India and Pakistan continue to escalate," said Air Chief marshal Jack Stirrup told a defense think tank called the Royal United Services Institute, according to Reuters, "there's a risk they and we could be diverted from the real issue: Dealing with the terrorist groups who perpetrate such criminal and barbaric acts."

msm -- with wire reports