THE LONE surviving gunman of the Mumbai terrorist attacks yesterday stunned a courtroom by changing his plea to guilty and giving a blow-by-blow account of his part in the siege in which 166 people were killed last November.
Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab (21) took everyone by surprise – including his own lawyer – when he told the judge, in Urdu: “Sir, I plead guilty to my crime.”
Denying that pressure had been put on him to confess, Kasab described how the 10 gunmen travelled to India by boat from Pakistan and how he and a colleague threw hand grenades and opened fire on members of the public at Mumbai’s main railway station.
His confession came two days after the government of Pakistan filed charges against five people it claims masterminded the attacks and identified Kasab as a Pakistani national. It blamed the attacks on the Laskhar-e-Taiba terrorist group under the direction of its operations chief, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.
Kasab said he had decided to change his plea because of the change of heart by the government in Islamabad, but his volte face was greeted with scepticism both in India and Pakistan.
He claimed that the terrorists had been coached in Hindi by an Indian national, whom he named as Abu Jundal.
After quitting his job as a shop assistant in Jhelum town in Pakistan, he and a colleague, named Muzzafar, travelled to Rawalpindi intending to become robbers.
They approached some men with long beards in the city, guessing that they were Islamic radicals who could supply weapons, and the men put them in touch with Lashkar-e-Taiba. They received weapons training from the group.
Kasab lived in a house in Karachi with 10 other men for a month and a half. They were then moved to another address before leaving Pakistan by boat. On the boat they met their four handlers and received their instructions.
He said four boats were involved in the voyage before they landed in the Colaba area of Mumbai on the evening of November 26th.
They hailed taxis and headed for their targets. He and another gunman, Abu Ismail, made for the Chhatrapati Shivaji terminus.
They escaped on foot and headed for the Cama hospital. Kasab gave details of the encounter in which three senior anti-terrorist officers were shot dead. They were finally arrested by police who had set up a road block. The attacks ended when troops stormed the Taj Mahal hotel where the remaining gunmen were holding out.
The trial continues. – ( Guardianservice)