‘ISI plan turned into 26/11 attacks by ex-major with Qaeda blessings’

Initial plan was a 'low-profile proxy operation',according to a book written by the slain Pak journalist.

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Pakistani spy agency ISI had chalked out a “low-profile routine proxy operation” in India through Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) but the plan was “hijacked” and turned into Mumbai attacks by an ex-Pakistan Army major and terrorist Ilyas Kashmiri’s men with al-Qaeda’s blessings,according to a book written by slain journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad.

Excerpts from the book ‘Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban beyond bin Laden and 9/11’,published in the Dawn,give Shahzad’s interpretations of how the 2008 Mumbai attacks,which claimed 166 lives,unfurled.

“With Ilyas Kashmiri’s immense expertise on Indian operations,he stunned the al-Qaeda leaders with the suggestion that expanding the war theatre was the only way to overcome the present impasse.

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“He presented the suggestion of conducting such a massive operation in India as (it) would bring India and Pakistan to war and with that all proposed operations against al-Qaeda would be brought to a grinding halt. Al-Qaeda excitedly approved the attack-India proposal,” the 40-year-old author,whose murder has sent shockwaves among the media and rights groups,said in the book released on May 20.

He said Kashmiri then handed over the plan to “a very able former army major Haroon Ashik”,who was also an ex-LeT commander and was still very close to the LeT’s Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi and Abu Hamza.

“Haroon knew about a plan by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) that had been in the pipelines for several months with the official policy to drop it as it was to have been a low-profile routine proxy operation in India through LeT.

“The former army major,with the help of Ilyas Kashmiri’s men in India,hijacked the ISI plan and turned it into the devastating attacks that shook Mumbai on November 26,2008 and brought Pakistan and India to the brink of a war,” according to the book.