Kasab’s killer pal not Maldivian

The cover story article in India’s The Week magazine published on 16 January 2011 claims Maldivian involvement in the terrorist attacks carried out on Mumbai in November 2008.

The article written by Anupam Dasgupta claims that India in its zeal to nail Pakistan for the attacks ignored the Maldivian who was among the nine slain terrorists. 

It is mentioned that this mysterious Maldivian phoned his family 48 hours before 26 November 2008, to say that he was bound for heaven in two days time. His family only realised what he meant when they heard about the 26/11 terror attacks on Mumbai, and they later claimed that he was among the nine dead terrorists.     

There are several questions that arise here concerning the modus operandi of terrorist groups in carrying out their missions. According to Ajmal Kasab – the only attacker captured alive by Mumbai police – they set sail from Karachi on 23 November 2008. The group hijacked an Indian fishing trawler named Kuber and reached Mumbai, so where is the question of the Maldivian calling his parents 48 hours before the attack, and besides, the general rule behind all such terrorist operations is that it should be conducted in extreme secrecy for fear of any information getting leaked before the planned objectives are met. The real mastermind behind such operations closely monitor all actions of their handpicked participants, weeks or perhaps months before the mission – even to the extent of knowing who they talk to, where they go to, etc. Still they allowed him to phone Maldives and talk to someone in a language they did not understand?

The so called mysterious Maldivian, whose name according to The Week’s article is supposed to be Nasir or Nazir not only spelled or sounds like Maldivian as the writer wants us to believe. Most Maldivians and Pakistanis have Arabic names because people in these two countries are overwhelmingly Muslim. Just check into the facebook to see how many Pakistanis have got these names. The alleged Maldivian family never saw their son’s face among the photographs of the attackers released by Mumbai police, and yet they claimed he was among the nine slain terrorists. Given the notoriety of the crime committed on 26/11, no parents would likely to declare that their son was an accomplice in the killing rampage that went on for nearly four days in Mumbai, for fear of being labelled as the mother or father of a terrorist. The Week’s article fails to mention the names of the mysterious Maldivian’s parents or his hometown in Maldives. Unlike India, for Maldivians to obtain a passport for the very first time takes just one or two days. Maldives, a country with a small population of just over 300,000 people where almost everyone over 10 years old has his own valid national identity card or passport, the person could be identified with relative ease.      

The Wikipedia mentions that Ajmal Kasab wrote a letter to the Pakistani High Commission in India confirming that he and the nine slain terrorists as Pakistanis. Kasab, whose real name still remains in the shadows is alive today and is in Indian custody. He has been charged with murder, conspiracy and waging war against India along with a list of other crimes. The article does not make any sense when it says that top Maldivian security officials and politicians were aware of a Maldivian’s involvement in 26/11, but the Indian intelligence was not interested in probing into the matter further to see if there was any Maldivian link to the attacks. Maldives is at the doorsteps of India and any activity taking shape in this country that threatens the national security of India has an utmost significance for the Indian authorities to investigate.   

The Week’s article claims that Maldivian officials ‘zeroed in on Nasir alias Abu Umar’ one of the two attackers on Nariman House, because he is supposed to have come from Pakistan’s Faisalabad where many Maldivian students previously went to study in madrasas there. Starting from the early 1980’s, countless number of Maldivians have studied Islamic jurisprudence, medicine, nursing and business, etc. in the Pakistani cities of Karachi, Peshawar, Multan, Islamabad, Lahore and Faisalabad. Many new conscripts into the National Security Service (NSS), the predecessor of the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) have completed their advanced military training in Pakistan. Many Maldivians who studied in those so called jihadi nations such as Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia are now in the top posts of the Maldives government. One such example is Hassan Afeef, the current Home Minister, who is an eye witness or an activist of the Ayatollah Khomeini led Iranian Revolution that overthrew US backed Shah. Afeef says he was present as a student amongst the demonstrators when the Iranian security forces opened fire on the crowd killing almost 20,000 people. Could it be said that Afeef has been ‘radicalised by scholars working outside the university?’

Many Maldivians continued to visit Sri Lanka during the civil war that killed almost a 100,000 people, and thousands of Maldivians were living, studying and working in that country throughout the 25 year old armed conflict. In fact, a few Maldivians joined and completed terrorist training with the Tamil paramilitary groups that broke away from Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the mainstream separatist organisation. Two Maldivians named Abdulla Lutfi and Ahmed Nasir joined People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) led by Uma Maheshwaran alias Mukundan. In November 1988, more than 80 Tamil mercenaries led by Abdulla Lutfi invaded Maldives capital, Malé and attempted to overthrow the government. The coup attempt was foiled by the Indian armed forces that arrived on the scene upon the request of then President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. A total of 19 people got killed in the gun battle on the streets of Malé and the hostage taking at sea. However, the thousands of Maldivians studying, living and visiting Sri Lanka were not accused of getting themselves involved in terrorism. Nevertheless, an illegal action of a few Maldivian individuals studying or living in Pakistan is sufficient proof to accuse the great majority of Islam loving Maldivians of terrorism, and draft a bill to ‘acquire legal teeth’ to restrain or arrest Muslim scholars.            

The Week insists that Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed ‘feels there is a Maldivian connection to the attack’ and the President believes the attackers might have used Maldivian territorial waters to reach Mumbai. This speculation by President Nasheed is in clear contrast to what has been established by the Indian investigating authorities. Many terrorist attacks have been carried out in India, but so far none of the attacks have been proven to have gone through the Maldivian territorial waters. There have been no news reports that Laskar-e-Taiba have begun to operate from the Somali coast. If the al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Shabaab fighters or Somali pirates pose a threat to India, they are more of a threat to Maldives. An archipelago of small islands spread into a vast area of the Indian Ocean is more prone to attacks from pirates or sea terrorists. Since the beginning of 2010, 34 Somalis suspected to be pirates have been found and detained by the Maldives coastguard police, and their cases are being investigated with the help of marines from the US Pacific Command.  

A Zionist conspiracy in the article is revealed when Nasir, the mysterious Maldivian involved in 26/11 is said to have attacked the Nariman House hosting a synagogue and taking the Jewish inmates hostage. Out of the 10 coordinated attacks on Mumbai targeting different locations in the city, it seemed the Maldivian in the group chose to attack the Jewish centre. If the writer had wanted, he could have nailed the mysterious Maldivian to be attacking The Taj Mahal Palace or the Oberoi Trident, because not just the names of two of the terrorists, but nearly all of them sounded Maldivian. Names such as Shoaib, Imran, Javed, Fahd, Abdul Rahman and Hafiz are common names in Maldives. The skin complexion and face structure are almost similar amongst many people in South Asia. The treacherous intentions of The Week are revealed when strangely distorted and blurred pictures of two dead men who they say were killed in the attack on Nariman House came to be published.   

Nearly a month before The Week’s article got published; series of anti-Israeli demonstrations involving thousands of people rocked the Maldives capital, Malé. They were protesting against the visit of seven Israeli eye surgeons representing Eye from Zion to treat patients in Maldives. The protesters called on the Maldives government to deport the Israeli eye surgeons and sever diplomatic relations with the state of Israel. Since then, the Zionist sympathizers in their zeal to find a scapegoat for the prevailing anti-Israeli sentiments in Maldives have pointed the accusation fingers to Muslim scholars and consequently they have been branded as ‘hate preachers’.

Refusing to accept humanitarian assistance from the Zionist state of Israel cannot be branded as extremism or that Maldivians have adopted jihadi-Salafi Islam as their ideology. Accepting or refusing aid from Israel is a matter of choice for the people of Maldives. Israeli blockade of Gaza Strip and refusal to allow humanitarian aid into the territory is taking its human toll on the Palestinian population. Palestinian children in Gaza are in dire need of medical aid, food and clothing, etc. The Israelis should first lend a helping hand to the people of Palestine to alleviate their sufferings before they try to help the people of Maldives.     

There is nothing wrong in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or any other Arab country funding to build mosques in Maldives. If it is wrong, it is also equally or perhaps more wrong for the American Jews to fund Israel to build Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories in clear contravention to the international law.

Two years have passed since the Mumbai attacks, and no investigating authority either in India or Maldives have confirmed the involvement of a Maldivian in the terrorist attacks. These allegations only started to emerge when the anti-Israeli demonstrations started taking shape in Maldives, not because the outspoken Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed said so in an interview in October 2009.     

Despite the fact that atrocities are being committed against fellow Muslims in the Indian controlled part of Kashmir, no anti-Indian demonstrations have ever been held in the Maldives, and no Muslim scholar or cleric in this country has called for jihad against India. Compared to Kashmir, the only Muslim majority state in India, Maldivians view the issue of Palestine and the oppression forced upon on its Arab inhabitants by Israel with a different perspective. It is so because the land of Palestine occupies a special place in the hearts of Muslims worldwide, not because they are happy with the sufferings of Muslim Kashmiris. Despite such brainstorming odds, the Maldivians have always mourned whenever a calamity or tragedy strikes India, and they did so during the Mumbai attacks and the assassinations of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.             

After two years of Western imposed democracy in Maldives, the masses have become fed up with the say one thing and do another party politics, and the people are slowly moving towards mainstream Islam to find consolation in religion and also with the hope of finding a solution to other social evils. Drug abuse, child molestation, robbery, burglary and gang violence is rampant in all corners of the Maldivian society.    

Dr Ahmed Shaheed, the former Foreign Minister and current adviser to President Nasheed said they have done a thorough investigation, and speculates that more people from Maldives may have ‘been involved in other parts of the operation.’ He did not specifically mention what these other parts or areas of operation. It could be supplying arms, providing logistics, collecting intelligence, communication etc. However, Dr Shaheed’s thorough investigation led us nowhere in trying to confirm the involvement of the so called other Maldivians in 26/11.

Isolated incidents such as the Sultan Park bombing in 2007, and the arrest of eight Maldivians near the Afghan-Pak border by Pakistani authorities is no pretext to accuse the Maldives of sheltering 3000 Lashkar-e-Taiba trained men. In June 2005, four suicide bombers struck the heart of London, killing scores of innocent civilians, and American and UK nationals have been arrested in Afghanistan while fighting alongside Taliban and al-Qaeda. Nonetheless, it is an injustice to accuse the great majority of Muslims living in these two countries of extremism or that all Muslim preachers in the West are trying to breed terrorists.

Getting arrested on charges of suspicion is no proof that the person arrested has committed a crime or is an accomplice in something sinister. In the aftermath of 9/11, US probably offered rewards for anyone facilitating to arrest even a single al-Qaeda militant believed to be hiding in Afghanistan or Pakistan. As a consequence lots of innocent people have been rounded up and handed over to US custody. None of those arrested thought they would end up in a US military base prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Many of those who had been detained for years and released afterwards without a charge complained of physical and psychological torture.

President Nasheed’s policy of closer ties with the Zionist regime of Israel and the alleged secret deals are likely to create more tension between the government and the devout Muslims in this country. The end result of this move would be Israel making a terrible mess out of the peace that prevails in this nation by dictating to President Nasheed what he should do to fight ‘radicalism’ or ‘extremism.’ This may lead to a more harsh counter-terrorism legislation to ban peaceful Islamic organisations and arrest Muslim scholars preaching in Maldives.           

The renowned Indian Muslim preacher, Dr Zakir Naik’s first lecture in Maldives in May 2010 was the biggest gathering held in the Maldives so far. If Muslim preachers like Sheikh Ibrahim Fareed and Sheikh Ilyas Hussein were to be branded as ‘hate preachers’, The Week should take into account that Dr Naik, who preaches about the flaws in the Christian Bible and Hinduism has a worldwide audience via satellite television. The Week should put its own house in order first before calling to ‘curb non-violent radicalism’ in Maldives ‘that may lead to violent action.’     

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Written by: Ibrahim Nazim
29 January 2011, Saturday
25 Safar 1432