26/11: The memory of fear

It is five years on from Mumbai 2008 and Adrian Levy and Cathy ScottClark are getting used to the new rhythm of living in London Their basement flat is in a pretty corner of Hammersmith right by the River Thames In April they will be able to stand on the pavement and see the OxfordCambridge boats slice through the water But their lives together have been governed by another boat a dinghy actually which brought 10 heavily armed young Pakistanis ashore in Mumbai The terror attack on the Taj Mahal Hotel and CST station changed the fabric of Mumbai for ever PicShadab Khan The consequences they have put into their fastpaced and factfilled book The Siege Three Days of Terror Inside the Taj Mumbai seems a million miles away Adrian and Cathy are the parents of two young children and have to worry about everyday things like school runs Adding to their charming domesticity is a longhaired black cat which is let into the kitchen by Cathy It has a midmorning snack and then finds itself a comfortable berth on a velvet seat Hafiz Saeed head of JamaatudDawa addressing a rally in Lahore recently PicAFP ldquoHe is wild hersquos from Francerdquo says Cathy by way of explanation A couple of nights previously Adrian and Cathy had hosted a small launch party in Soho to mark the publication of their book But now there is the time to have a more indepth chat although they are preparing for their quick trip to Mumbai they were in the city earlier this month They will return to India in the new year for the Jaipur Literary Festival before flying to Calcutta But London is now home For Adrian Levy and Cathy ScottClark the book is a tribute to the bravery of the besieged people PicAmit Roy ldquoWe had been in the subcontinent for more than 18 years working living in Delhi the two kids have been there we have just come back to the UKrdquo says Adrian ldquoThis is our first time living in the UK since 1995 so we are touristsrdquo If their book reads a little like one of those Insight investigations in The Sunday Times with its studious attention to detail it may well be because Adrian and Cathy worked for the paper in India from 199698 The style leaves its mark Then they moved on to The Guardian from 20002009 Focus on Taj The Siege has already been intensively discussed back in India so is there anything new to ask Cathy explains why the focus is on the Taj where 33 people were killed ldquoThe reason it was the Taj was because it had the widest range of characters inside it specially the Taj chefs who tried to evacuate a lot of peoplerdquo she says ldquoAt the very moment that gunmen came into the kitchens seven of them were killed The Siege focuses on the Taj because it had the widest range of characters inside it explain the authors But others were injured because they ran at the gunmen to try to stop the gunmen getting at the guests They were completely selfless and died very tragicrdquo Adrian comments ldquoWhat we wanted to do was a tribute Those interviews where you know you have touched something they change you always They are things you never forgetrdquo Cathy ldquoThe first thing I do when I write a book like this is get pictures of all the characters and put them up on a wallrdquo Clear winner But you do wonder from the Pakistani perspective what was the point of it all Ten brainwashed young men with guns were infiltrated into Mumbai killed 166 innocent people and injured some 600 others but what was the ultimate gain for Pakistan And who really were the people responsible The one clear winner according to Adrian is the Pakistani militant group LashkareToiba which trained and sent across the terrorists He says Lashkar was previously in disarray and in danger of losing half its fighters to the ldquomuch more glamorous Al Qaeda movementrdquo But Mumbai has given it a fresh lease of life Its boss behind the scenes is Hafiz Saeed but he is a shrewd operator who covers his tracks so that there is no evidence that can be used to convict him in a court of law The Americans have placed a 10m bounty on his head but Adrian who has met the man says he is not bothered In any case his back is covered by the InterServices Intelligence ISI so he cannot be touched So is the ISI involved The answer is yes and no Yes ISI people helped train the terrorists it certainly helped David Headley on his reconnaissance missions in Mumbai But no though individual ISI agents are involved there is no proof the organization planned the Mumbai attack the authors argue At this point the whole things starts to take on the feel of a John Le Carreacute novel No surgical strike Adrian says it was ldquoremarkably braverdquo of India not to hit back after Mumbai Many in the west had expected ldquoa surgical strikerdquo but it is hard to see how a country which cannot even find a rickety bus to take commandos from Mumbai airport to the Taj Mahal Hotel can suddenly start acting as though it has the equivalent of Britainrsquos elite SAS We all know India does not do strikes surgical or otherwise In any case a military strike should Mumbai II ever happen would be just as counterproductive Adrian takes heart from the transfer of power that has taken place in Pakistan from one civilian government to another There are people in the political establishment who want to nail down the terrorists but Adrian says they have not exactly been helped by the Indians This will be for the authors to explain in greater detail when they get to Mumbai but Adrian claims that the evidence Pakistani prosecutors sought was sent over in Marathi He also takes a dim view of the timing of Ajmal Kasabrsquos execution before he could provide damning evidence about his trainers to the Pakistani authorities Cathy says ldquoYou can pin down specific areas where the ISI helped They helped David Headley He had an ISI handler in Lahore his code name was Major Iqbal and he trained him and put him in touch with an officer from the Pakistan army who trained him in surveillance tactics Every time Headley went to Mumbai and took his photos and videos and GPS readings he handed them back to Major Iqbal in Lahore and also his handlers in Lashkar separately in Muzaffarabad So that was an ongoing relationship that went all the way through the planning and then at the training camps there were two or three ISI officers with noms de guerre who actually trained the guys who did the attackrdquo Adrian ldquoThe difficulty is that LashkareToiba is a covert tool of the ISI and Pakistan foreign policy and it was conceived as such in 1990 and funded and trained as such And when you talk to people in the country they tell you Lashkar is untouchable When you are inside the organization what you see is that it packed full of soldiers and spies but it is not clear if any of them are serving A lot of them are retired The lack of clarity means it is very hard ultimately to deduce whether the state is responsible or individuals There is no single strand of evidence that has emerged and there is mountains of evidence that has come to the surface which identifies that the state is complicit in any way All the evidence points to individual officers within the ISI and the ISI has a good deal of latitude for long serving individual officers They operate with a very wide remit particularly in the Jihad sectionrdquo Disciplined organisation This is Adrian on Hafiz Saeed ldquoHe is the emir of JamaatudDawa the religious and spiritual guide of that organization There is the fig leaf that the political establishment is kept separate from the armed wing LashkareToiba The problem for the prosecutors in Pakistan is you can arrest Hafiz Saeed but there is no evidence that can go through the court Hafiz Saeed operates a very very disciplined organization it is not like any other Jihad organisation it is not like LashkareJhangvi or SipaheSahaba They are very very disciplined The men are highly organized internally and externally So it impossible given the structure of LashkareToiba for Hafiz Saeed not to know what goes on in his outfit It is is impossiblerdquo Cathy ldquoThe public outcry if anyone arrested Hafiz Saeed would be not worth the trouble because he is so powerful politically He controls so much of the Punjab through his organization So they are not prepared to arrest himrdquo Adrian ldquoThe military establishment that has chosen him and polished him and refined him over the years cannot afford to betray him He is a very shrewd cunning wellhoned political operator and there is not a piece of paper with his name on it The ones in court now are poor relations who know nothing They are just cannon fodderrdquo The authors allege that India has not been helped by the refusal of the United States to share its intelligence on David Headley Adrian ldquoThe FBI had had 80 hours of video testimony None of it has been shown to India it is all under lock and keyrdquo All in all Mumbai has been good for Lashkar Adrian ldquoThey were virtually bankrupt they had no members the organisation had dwindled into nothing they had been completely eclipsed by Al Qaeda After the attack by government forces on the Lal Masjid most of the membership fled so in that sense Lashkar has revived itself And it also managed to pull back in quite a lot of people in the Punjab who would have gone elsewhererdquo Bringing it home The Siege is taking on a life of its own ldquoWe have created with a team of engineers in Plymouth a 3D visualization of the Taj and you can actually walk through the Taj and go where you want to go within three or four environments we are trying to bring it homerdquo reveals Adrian ldquoWe want to do it as a docu dramardquou00a0The last word should go to Cathy ldquoWe can lobby for a proper inquiry which has been promised by the Home Minister a proper investigation into what went wrong and which leads to changesrdquo Jurisdiction verdict today in Taj case The High Court in London will give its judgment today in the case of a British man paralysed during the Mumbai terror attacks Will Pike 33 from north London is taking legal action against the Indian Hotels Company Ltd a part of the Tata Group The verdict follows the hearing which took place from Dec 2 to 4 after the owners of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel argued that his legal case against them should not be heard in a UK court Leigh Day his Londonbased lawyers are bringing quota civil claim for damages against the Indian Hotels Company Ltd They allege that the owners of the hotel did little to provide security for residents despite several warnings that an attack on the hotel was imminentquot The lawyers say Pike quotwas paralysed in November 2008 when he fell nearly 50 feet breaking his back pelvis and leg and fracturing both his left wrist and right elbow in a bid to escape the Islamic extremists as they went through the hotel shooting residents and setting firesquot In this battle over legal jurisdiction Leigh Day argue that quotthe case should be heard in the UK where Mr Pike lives and where the Indian Hotels Company Ltd has a substantial business presencequot