Washington, May 8: The ISI facilitated militants to cross the border to carry out strikes on Indian targets chosen by the Pakistan Army, several detainees at the Guantanamo Bay facility told US interrogators, according to a fresh set of American diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.
The interrogation reports quoted a detainee as saying that ISI “allowed” militants to travel to India where they conducted bombings, kidnappings and killing of Kashmiri people and the targets were picked up by the Pakistani Army.
The revelations add to Pakistan's embarrassment after Osama bin Laden was found living at a million-dollar mansion in the garrison city of Abbottabad.
The US was long aware of the presence of anti-India terror training camps in Pakistan with several inmates telling investigators how ISI allowed militants to carry attacks in India.
The disclosures are part of 779 interrogation reports from the facility of detainees from all over the world and show how a number of detainees were linked to anti-India Lashkar-e-Taiba and had received terror training in Pakistan.
The reports quote detainees from countries like Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Pakistan as telling interrogators about their recruitment and subsequent travelling to Pakistan for terror training before their actual deployment to launch attacks against India and also Afghanistan.
An Algerian detainee Abdul Azia admitted he was a member of LeT for which he noted that “their mission (was) to kill Indians in India”, says a detailed report of his interrogation, released by the whistleblower website.
“Detainee is assessed to have recruited in Saudi Arabia and received training from the LT in Pakistan. The detainees is further assessed to have participated in combat in Kashmir, and then travelled to Afghanistan where he was injured,” says a note about Azia.
Records of a Pakistani prisoner named Mohammad Anwer showed that he travelled to Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied Kashmirwhere he attended an LeT training camp for 21 days in 1998 and later served in Afghanistan.
“Detainee has been identified through sensitive reporting as a Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence Dirctorate agent,” the document says.
One of the reports quotes Chaman Gul, an Afghan militant as telling investigators about Mast Gul, a former Major of the Pakistani Army, who was “a notorious terrorist who fought in Kashmir and planned terror attacks against a number of targets in Kabul.
Gul is closely alligned to Hizb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG), an al Qaeda linked group and ISI Directorate. The detainee claimed that Mast Gul controlled all guerilla activity in Kashmir from his home base in Muzaffarabad.
Chaman also said that militants were deployed for three to four months and then asked to return. He also said as member of Hizb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, he was part of a plan to assassinate Karzai and the US ambassador.
While one detainee Yacoub claimed that he had got a security job with the Hamid Karzai government, another said he was an informant of British intelligence service. In another such assessment report, a senior al Qaeda operative was said to be planning to use Indians for terror attacks because of the low-level of scrutiny Indians are subjected to in the western nations.
“Detainee admitted that he had considered using India as a platform to send operatives to the US or UK because of the large Muslim population there and the low level of scrutiny given to travellers of Indian nationality,” the document on Abu al-Libi says. PTI
