WSJ: India names Mumbai mastermind

Good story in the Wall Street Journal about Yusuf Muzammil, the Lashkar-e-Taiba leader who India believes is a key figure in the Mumbai attacks: Just two days before hitting the city, the group of 10 terrorists who ravaged India’s financial capital communicated with Yusuf Muzammil and four other Lashkar leaders via a satellite phone that ...

Good story in the Wall Street Journal about Yusuf Muzammil, the Lashkar-e-Taiba leader who India believes is a key figure in the Mumbai attacks:

Good story in the Wall Street Journal about Yusuf Muzammil, the Lashkar-e-Taiba leader who India believes is a key figure in the Mumbai attacks:

Just two days before hitting the city, the group of 10 terrorists who ravaged India’s financial capital communicated with Yusuf Muzammil and four other Lashkar leaders via a satellite phone that they left behind on a fishing trawler they hijacked to get to Mumbai, a senior Mumbai police official told The Wall Street Journal. The entire group also underwent rigorous training in a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, the official said.

This much has already been widely reported, with some minor discrepancies about where the satellite phone was found. But here’s a new wrinkle:

Mr. Muzammil had earlier been in touch with an Indian Muslim extremist who scoped out Mumbai locations for possible attack before he was arrested early this year, said another senior Indian police official. The Indian man, Faheem Ahmed Ansari, had in his possession layouts drawn up for the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel and Mumbai’s main railway station, both prime targets of last week’s attack, the police official said.

Mr. Ansari, who also made sketches and maps of locations in southern Mumbai that weren’t attacked, had met Mr. Muzammil and trained at the same Lashkar camp as the terrorists in last week’s attack, an official said.

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