Washington, Sept 7: American officials knew for a very long time that ISI had created various terrorist groups, including those based out from Nepal, to carry out attacks in India including the 1996 Lajpat Nagar blast, according to the latest US cables released by Wikileaks.
The US cables clearly show that Americans also knew that Tiger Memon, the prime accused in 1993 Mumbai blast case and an aide of global terrorist Dawood Ibrahim, had tied up with the ISI.
In these cables, US officials say that it is the ISI which created various terrorist fronts to carry out terror activities in India, including the bomb blasts in the busy areas of Connaught Place, Lajpat Nagar in New Delhi and several cities across the country.
One of such organisation created by ISI in Pakistan was Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Front (JKIF), with its main base in Kathmandu, Nepal.
“To dispatch men and material and to execute explosions in India, Kathmandu was invariably made the nodal point and JKIF exploited the vulnerable Kathmandu-based Kashmiri businessmen for such activities since they had a ready-made and clean past.
JKIF kingpin Javed Krawah himself used to run a carpet business in Kathmandu,” said the US cable signed off by none other than the then US Ambassador to India, Frank Wisner. JKIF, says the cable dated July 8, 1997, was controlled from Pakistan by ISI and Memon.
“Their contact in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir was Bilal Beg, who was running an indoctrination camp near Muzaffarabad, funded extensively by the ISI to carry out terrorist acts in India.
One Colonel Farooq of Pakistan ISI tasked Bilal Beg and Tiger Memon to utilize Kathmandu-based activists Lateef and Javed Krawah to set off blasts in Delhi before the Lok Sabha elections,” it said.
In May 21, 1996; this JKIF team set off a very high intensity explosion at Lajpat Nagar in which 13 persons were killed and 40 injured.
“The RDX used in this blast was brought from Kathmandu,” the cable said.
The subsequent explosion in a Rajasthan roadways bus near Dausa on May 22, 1996 was also engineers by the JKIF. “Another JKIF team under the leadership of Abdul Gani, AKA Assadullah, was sent to execute a bomb blast in Ahmedabad,” it said.
JKIF again planned a chain of explosions in Delhi before Republic Day 1997 at the behest of Pakistan ISI and Tiger Memon, the cable said.
Since its inception, the JKIF had been under considerable pressure from its Pakistan-based leadership t carry out bomb blasts outside J&K, particularly in Delhi, the cable said. PTI
