THE ISRAELI CONTROLLED BBC

Lyons
Sir Michael Lyons is the Chairman of the, reportedly, much hated and utterly discredited BBC Trust.
Lyons is a Jew.
Anthony Fry is another of the BBC Trustees.
He has worked for the Rothschild Group.
The Independent (UK newspaper) on 16 April 2009 tells us about the BBC Trust which “is now a mouthpiece for the Israeli lobby.” (story here.)
What did Jeremy Bowen do wrong?
Gaius
Marcus Ambrose Paul Agius was appointed the senior non-executive director on the BBC’s executive board.
Born into a Jewish family, Agius is married to Katherine, daughter of Edmund de Rothschild of the Rothschild banking family of England, with two children, and has a close involvement with the Rothschild family estate, Exbury Gardens in Hampshire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Agius
Sharon had some strange friends.
1. The BBC “is literally behaving like it’s the Israeli state broadcaster.” – Jews sans frontieres
2. Lenin’s Tomb reminds us of this episode.
“What happened to BBC correspondent Orla Guerin just days after Mark Thompson had his cosy tete-a-tete with that obese blood-drenched old brute Ariel Sharon.
THOMPSON
“Before Thompson took up his position as Director General of the BBC, the Guardian had reported on the ferocious pressure being exerted on news organisations by the Israeli government, including complaints about individual reporters:
The Israeli government has written to the BBC accusing its Middle East correspondent, Orla Guerin, of anti-semitism and “total identification with the goals and methods of the Palestinian terror groups”.
“Orla Guerin’s offence was to run stories not just about the grief of Israeli families who had lost family members to suicide bombers but also stories about the grief and suffering of ordinary Palestinian families. As one blogger put it at the time:
Guerin’s real sin, of course, is to show some sympathy for the victims of the Israeli bombing (that’s enough to brand her a “terrorist”).
“Within days of Thompson meeting Sharon, Guerin was sacked as BBC TV Middle East correspondent and transferred to Africa.
Sharon had some strange friends.
3. ‘In November 2005, Thompson (the BBC’s boss) traveled with his Jewish wife to Israel, where he held direct talks with Sharon, which were intended to let the BBC build bridges with Israel’. – Mark Thomson and the Kosher BBC
4. Mark Thompson has been known to spend his holidays with his Jewish relatives in the USA.
He was educated by the Jesuits.
He is the Director General of the BBC.
He decided not to broadcast a charity appeal to help the stricken people of Gaza rebuild their homes. (BBC crisis over refusal to broadcast Gaza appeal)
The BBC isn’t doing well under its Director-General for the past five years, Mark Thompson.
According to Broadcast magazine, on 7 April 2009, the BBC suffered its second worst peaktime performance since at least 2001, managing an audience share of only 5.3 per cent.
(With less than a million viewers, BBC licence fee is as hard to …)
Thompson should be sacked.
Over the Gaza Appeal incident, Mark Thompson received backing from the BBC Trust’s chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, who is Jewish.
Sir Michael Lyons should be sacked.

Photo of Ed Vaizey by Kaihsu
ED VAIZEY, the UK CONSERVATIVE Party Culture Minister reveals himself to be a Zionist Jew when he says (Reaction to BBC Gaza appeal row ):
“The trouble with broadcasting an appeal from a war zone, is that there are two sides to the argument – and that’s what I think we’re seeing here.
“That’s why I think the BBC should be allowed to make the argument that it wants to preserve its impartiality on the issue.”
Sack Ed Vaizey!

The Terror of the Israel

The cleverness of the Israelis is that they have created the ‘militant’ Moslems and ‘terrorist’ Moslems in order to discredit the Moslems. UPI Investigation reveals that Israel funded Hamas for twenty years
And in December 2008:
Israel Starts the Killing Again
And who controls the media?
Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009…are censored
Since September 2000, 1,050 Palestinian children have been killed by the Israelis.
The Israelis have stolen the land of the Palestinians and driven the Palestinians off their land.
In 1949 there were 711,000 Palestine refugees. In 2005 there were 4.25 million Palestinian refugees. (Nexus between CIA and Mossad)
There were only about 50,000 Jews in Palestine in 1918. (Cached)
The 1947 Partition plan gave 56% of Palestine to the Jews and 44% to the Palestinians.
Now, the Palestinians have 22% and the rest has been annexed by Israel by force.
Victim of Israeli missile.
The Israelis beat and torture and kill Palestinian children.
Save The Children concluded that ‘one-third of beaten children were under ten years old, one-fifth under the age of five. Nearly a third of children beaten suffered broken bones.’

Israeli-style fascism has spread to many countries including, for example, the USA and India.
In Zionism – A Pernicious Virus and a World Problem, Les Visible writes: “When you look at who heads up a number of main departments at Homeland Security you find mostly Zionist Jews.
“When you look at who pushed the Iraqi war and who is pushing for an attack on Iran you come up with a preponderance of Zionist Jews.
“Five Israeli were found celebrating the assault of the WTC. How did they know?…
“How is it that the same Israeli security firm was in-charge of all the 9/11 airports as well as the London Tube and Madrid train station at the time of attack?” (Nexus between CIA and Mossad)
The terrorists are the security services.
In 1998, in India, the right-wing BJP came to power, after stirring up the race question.
The BJP appears to be a tool of the fascist Neocons and the fascist Israelis.
Reportedly these fascists are involved in the terrorist blasts in india —Tenkasi, Nanded, Godhra, Mecca Masjid, Kanpur, Malegaon… (Nexus between CIA and Mossad)
Most of the extremist groups in Palestine are run by the Israelis and their allies. (Abu Nidal reportedly worked for the CIA and MOSSAD)
Who controls America?
Hindu fascists; two dead children’s bodies were found in the car belonging to a leading right-wing activist- randompottins.blogspot.com/2006/05/childrens-…
India’s secret service works with Mossad. (RAW and MOSSAD, the Secret Link,)
Allegedly, India’s secret service (RAW) is involved in acts of fascist terrorism.
“The 2007 blast at Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad, the attack on an Indo-Pak train in February 2007 and the April 2006 twin blasts at New Delhi’s Jama Masjid, the demolition of Babri Mosque, the Gujrat Massacre, the Ayudhia gang rape … and many incidents like that have been carried out by the Hindu terrorists with direct support from the Indian RAW.
“The right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party and its various sister organizations, under the supervision and training of Indian intelligence agency RAW, have their bases in Nagpur, Indore and Pune.” – (RSS, BJP, Bajrang Dal.)
Begin
Wherever you look, you find Israel working alongside right-wing fascist groups.
Zionist Menachem Begin became chief of the Zionist youth movement Betar in Poland.
Reportedly, Begin and his Betar members wore brown shirts and used the fascist salute. (Cached )
Himmler’s SS cooperated with the Haganah, the Zionist underground military organization in British -run Palestine.
Reportedly, Himmler’s grandfather was Jewish. (Himmler relative marries Israeli – Israel News, Ynetnews / eichmann was jewish hurricane katrina was a regional )
The German SS secretly supplied weapons to Jewish settlers for use in clashes with Palestinian Arabs. (F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), pp. 63-64, 105, 219-220.) (aangirfan: The Zionists are in bed with the Nazis)
Photo from: la.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/155160_comment.php
Israel appears to work with the fascists within the US, UK and European establishments.
Michael Ledeen is a neoconservative Zionist and a former employee of the Pentagon, the State Department and the National Security Council. (aangirfan: Michael Ledeen, Gladio and 9 11.)
Peter Chamberlin has written NEOCONSERVATISM – FASCIST ZIONISM and he links Ledeen to:
1. The fascist false-flag terrorism in Italy associated with Operation Gladio and the Strategy of Tension. (aangirfan: The Bologna Bomb 1980, Gladio, terrorism in Europe)
2. The Niger yellow cake forged documents.
3. The Iran/contra affair.
4. The events of 9 11.
Children of Nicaragua by JOAN PLANAS
Israel backed the fascist Contras in Nicaragua.
“Israel trained contra mercenary forces in Nicaragua and then expanded its mission to participate in the training for the rural ‘pacification’ of the population of El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Honduras…” – Jane Hunter in her book Israeli Foreign Policy, South Africa and Central America (Cached)

Israel has sold weapons and provided advisers to such countries as:
Panama, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, Ethiopia, Liberia, Morocco, Rhodesia, South Africa, Uganda, Zaire, China, Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Iran. (Israeli Foreign Policy Weapons manufacturing industry)
Israel has done deals with “the scum of the world’s tyrants” (Israeli Foreign Policy Weapons manufacturing industry):
1. The white clique in South Africa,
2. Somoza of Nicaragua,
3. Gen. Pinochet of Chile,
4. Marcos of the Philippines,
5. Duvalier of Haiti,
6. Mobutu of Zaire,
7. The allegedly cannibalistic Bokassa of the Central African Republic.
White South Africa got help from Israel
Weapons sales mean big bribes for politicians.
Most recently, we see the destruction brought to India by the Israelis.
In 2003, in India, the Congress Party protested against the right-wing Hindu BJP government’s setting up of a “strategic relationship” between the India and Israel.
Raja Swamy has written “The Case against Collaboration between India and Israel”:
“Barely a year after assuming office, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government led by the Congress Party agreed to continue expanding collaboration with Israel’s military industries…
PIB Photo of Israel’s Barak meeting Singh in 2007

“On the table were expanded purchases of Israeli armaments by India…
“By 2002 Israel’s non-military trade with India had grown to more than 6 times what it used to be in 1992 (1.27 billion as compared to $202 million). A host of Indian cabinet ministers visited Israel in 2004…
“It is a disturbing truth today that India’s dominant political elites, with little variance across party-lines, display an unswerving dedication to developing India as a market for Israeli armaments industries…
“It is not far-fetched to assume that the Indian ruling elites see their country increasingly as a regional surrogate for a U.S.-led agenda. In this view, the role of Israel as a ‘friend’ supplying arms serves the purpose of cementing such an assumed alliance.”

Palestinians killed by the Israelis in Shatila.
There are Nazi Jews and there are other Jews.
Zionist Menachem Begin became chief of the Zionist youth movement Betar in Poland.
Reportedly, Begin and his Betar members wore brown shirts and used the fascist salute. (Cached )
Menachem Begin

Hitler came to power in 1933 and he had the support of Zionist Jews.
It has been argued that Hitler may have been Jewish. (Hitler was Jewish? )
In 1933, the Zionist Federation of Germany sent a memorandum of support to the Nazi Party.
The World Zionist Organization Congress in 1933 defeated a resolution calling for action against Hitler by a vote of 240 to 43.
The World Zionist Organization ‘became the principal distributor of Nazi goods throughout the Middle East and Northern Europe’. (Cached)
Both Hitler and the Zionists believed:
1. There should be a homeland for the Jews
2. Might was right.
Many German Jews disagreed with the Nazis and the Zionists. Many German Jews were liberals and they wanted to stay in Germany.
Heydrich
Heydrich, a leading Nazi, supported the idea of a homeland for the Jews.
Heydrich may have been Jewish (Reinhard Heydrich who masterminded the Holocaust ).
In May 1935, Reinhardt Heydrich wrote an article, ‘The Visible Enemy’, for Das Schwarze Korps, the SS official organ.
He wrote:
“The time cannot be far distant when Palestine will again be able to accept its sons who have been lost to it for over a thousand years. Our good wishes together with our official good will go with them.”
(Karl Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz, pp. 193-4 – A NAZI TRAVELS T0 PALESTINE AND TELLS ABOUT IT IN THE ASSAULT …)
In 1934, SS officer Leopold von Mildenstein and Zionist Federation official Kurt Tuchler toured Palestine.
(Jacob Boas, “A Nazi Travels to Palestine,” History Today, London, January 1980, pp. 33-38.)
Von Mildenstein wrote a series of articles for the Berlin daily Der Angriff that were printed in 1934 under the heading “A Nazi Travels to Palestine.”
The articles praised the pioneering spirit and achievements of the Jews who had left Europe and settled in Palestine.
Der Angriff issued a medal, with a Swastika on one side and a Star of David on the other, to commemorate the joint SS-Zionist visit.
The official SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, proclaimed its support for Zionism in a May 1935 front-page editorial:
“The time may not be too far off when Palestine will again be able to receive its sons who have been lost to it for more than a thousand years. Our good wishes, together with official goodwill, go with them.”
Four months later, a similar article appeared in the SS paper.
(The Order of the Death’s Head, Ballantine, 1971, 1984, p. 377. Erich Kern, ed., Verheimlichte Dokumente, Munich: FZ-Verlag, 1988, p. 184. Das Schwarze Korps, Sept. 26, 1935. Quoted in: F. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question,1985, pp. 56-57. Zionism and the Third Reich)
Eichmann
In his book The Order of the SS (1981), Professor Frederic Reider explains how the Nazi Third Reich and Zionist Haganah worked together to encourage Jews to move to Palestine. (National Medical Association).
“At the time when Eichmann took over the Sub-department IV B4 in the R.S.H.A., which had been established to settle the Jewish question, he (Eichmann) was not himself anti-Semitic.
“His functions led him to collaborate closely with the World Zionist Organisation and to make contact with the leaders of the secret Zionist organisation, Haganah.
“He even went himself to Palestine in 1937, in the company of Oberscharfuhrer S.S. Sergeant Hagen, the successor to Leopold von Midenstein, to examine the problem….
“By the end of 1939, 150,000 Austrian Jews had left, by choice, to go to live in Palestine, as had also 120,000 German Jews and 78,000 from Bohemia/Moravia. This emigration had been organised by the S.D., with Haganah’s approval, and was carried out clandestinely by boat, despite the draconian measures taken by Britain to stop it…”

Eichman also had the Madagascar Plan, whereby a national Jewish homeland would be set up in Madagascar.
Himmler and Heydrich approved, and on 18th June 1940 Hitler himself told Mussolini ‘an Israeli state might be set up in Madagascar’. The project came to nothing. (National Medical Association)
Jewish historian David Cesarani, in Eichmann: His Life and Crimes, states that as a child Eichmann was persecuted because he looked Jewish.
Eichmann’s stepmother had Jewish relations and Eichman associated with Jews. Eichmann learned Hebrew, visited Palestine and worked closely with Zionists preparing Jews for emigration. (eichmann was jewish hurricane katrina was a regional)

Himler
Himmler’s SS cooperated with the Haganah, the Zionist underground military organization in British -run Palestine.
Reportedly, Himmler’s grandfather was Jewish. (Himmler relative marries Israeli – Israel News, Ynetnews / eichmann was jewish hurricane katrina was a regional )
The German SS secretly supplied weapons to Jewish settlers for use in clashes with Palestinian Arabs. (F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), pp. 63-64, 105, 219-220.)

It’s Not Just The Israelis Who Murder Kids And Steal Their Land

The ‘good effects’ of bombing a village market in Afghanistan
For very many years, the Americans and Europeans have been committing atrocities which could be described as ‘Nazi-style’, or ‘Israeli-style’.
From The Guardian 16 December 2008:
“The first bomb hit a large group of children who had run on ahead of the main procession.
“It killed most of them instantly.
“A few minutes later, the plane returned and dropped another bomb, right in the centre of the group.
“This time the victims were almost all women…
“I was still holding my grandson’s hand but the rest of him was gone…”
(‘I was still holding my grandson’s hand – the rest was gone’)
Afghan kids from Flickr. Author funbobseye
This happened in an area called Kamala in Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan, around 750 civilians have died in Nato and US air strikes this year.
The number of innocent people killed this way has almost doubled from last year, and tripled from the year before that.
The British started it.
Ninety-three years of bombing the Arabs
In 1911, the Italians bombed Libyan civilians from the air.
In 1912 the French began bombing Moroccan civilians from the air.
In 1913 the Spanish began bombing Moroccan villagers from the air.
They later used poison gas.
In 1915 the British began the aerial bombardment of Pathan villages on India’s North-West Frontier.
In 1919 the British bombed Afghan civilians from the air.
The British aerial bombardment of Dacca killed 600.
Over 90 years of terrorist activity by western countries.
Killing kids.

The world’s first air bombardment took place on 1 November 1911, when an Italian pilot named Giulio Gavotti dropped four hand grenades on Turkish troops camped in Libya.
(Axis of Evel Knievel: November 1)
Italy stole Libya from the Turkish Ottoman Empire in order to make it a colony.
For twenty years, the Libyans fought the Italians, in the hope of gaining their freedom.
In 1912, French pilots dropped bombs in Morocco.
In 1913, Serbs in French-built planes bombed Turkish forces during the First Balkan War.
ace-o-spades.blogspot.com/2004_01_11_archive.html
In 2005, in Iraq, US Marines reportedly massacred two dozen civilians in the town of Haditha.
Among the dead were six children under the age of fourteen as well as an elderly man shot to death in his wheelchair.
Nine-year-old Eman Waleed, who lived in the first house attacked by the US, described the events to Time magazine:
First, they went into my father’s room, where he was reading the Koran and we heard shots. . . .
I couldn’t see (the Marines’) faces very well—only their guns sticking into the doorway.
I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny.. . .
We were lying there, bleeding, and it hurt so much.
(axisofevelknievel.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_arc…)
A lot of people voted for Hitler, and Bush, and Blair, and Obama….

India nuclear plant leak under investigation

Indian officials are investigating the leak of a radioactive substance into drinking water at an atomic power plant in the south of the country.

Fifty-five workers at the Kaiga plant needed medical treatment for excessive exposure to radiation after tritium contaminated a water cooler.
Officials said the leak might have been deliberate.
"Mischief is not ruled out. Investigations are on," plant director J P Gupta told Reuters news agency.
The 55 workers had returned to their duties at the plant, Mr Gupta added.
"This incident has in no way affected the public, safety, health and environment."
The highly protected Kaiga plant is on the west coast of India, 450km (280 miles) from Bangalore.
Tritium, also known as Hydrogen-3, is used in research, fusion reactors and neutron generators.

source :  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8384894.stm

Blackwater's Secret War in Pakistan

 At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.
The source, who has worked on covert US military programs for years, including in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has direct knowledge of Blackwater's involvement. He spoke to The Nation on condition of anonymity because the program is classified. The source said that the program is so "compartmentalized" that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence.
The White House did not return calls or email messages seeking comment for this story. Capt. John Kirby, the spokesperson for Adm. Michael Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Nation, "We do not discuss current operations one way or the other, regardless of their nature." A defense official, on background, specifically denied that Blackwater performs work on drone strikes or intelligence for JSOC in Pakistan. "We don't have any contracts to do that work for us. We don't contract that kind of work out, period," the official said. "There has not been, and is not now, contracts between JSOC and that organization for these types of services."
The previously unreported program, the military intelligence source said, is distinct from the CIA assassination program that the agency's director, Leon Panetta, announced he had canceled in June 2009. "This is a parallel operation to the CIA," said the source. "They are two separate beasts." The program puts Blackwater at the epicenter of a US military operation within the borders of a nation against which the United States has not declared war--knowledge that could further strain the already tense relations between the United States and Pakistan. In 2006, the United States and Pakistan struck a deal that authorized JSOC to enter Pakistan to hunt Osama bin Laden with the understanding that Pakistan would deny it had given permission. Officially, the United States is not supposed to have any active military operations in the country.
Blackwater, which recently changed its name to Xe Services and US Training Center, denies the company is operating in Pakistan. "Xe Services has only one employee in Pakistan performing construction oversight for the U.S. Government," Blackwater spokesperson Mark Corallo said in a statement to The Nation, adding that the company has "no other operations of any kind in Pakistan."
A former senior executive at Blackwater confirmed the military intelligence source's claim that the company is working in Pakistan for the CIA and JSOC, the premier counterterrorism and covert operations force within the military. He said that Blackwater is also working for the Pakistani government on a subcontract with an Islamabad-based security firm that puts US Blackwater operatives on the ground with Pakistani forces in counter-terrorism operations, including house raids and border interdictions, in the North-West Frontier Province and elsewhere in Pakistan. This arrangement, the former executive said, allows the Pakistani government to utilize former US Special Operations forces who now work for Blackwater while denying an official US military presence in the country. He also confirmed that Blackwater has a facility in Karachi and has personnel deployed elsewhere in Pakistan. The former executive spoke on condition of anonymity.
His account and that of the military intelligence source were borne out by a US military source who has knowledge of Special Forces actions in Pakistan and Afghanistan. When asked about Blackwater's covert work for JSOC in Pakistan, this source, who also asked for anonymity, told The Nation, "From my information that I have, that is absolutely correct," adding, "There's no question that's occurring."
"It wouldn't surprise me because we've outsourced nearly everything," said Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, when told of Blackwater's role in Pakistan. Wilkerson said that during his time in the Bush administration, he saw the beginnings of Blackwater's involvement with the sensitive operations of the military and CIA. "Part of this, of course, is an attempt to get around the constraints the Congress has placed on DoD. If you don't have sufficient soldiers to do it, you hire civilians to do it. I mean, it's that simple. It would not surprise me."

The Counterterrorism Tag Team in Karachi

The covert JSOC program with Blackwater in Pakistan dates back to at least 2007, according to the military intelligence source. The current head of JSOC is Vice Adm. William McRaven, who took over the post from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC from 2003 to 2008 before being named the top US commander in Afghanistan. Blackwater's presence in Pakistan is "not really visible, and that's why nobody has cracked down on it," said the source. Blackwater's operations in Pakistan, he said, are not done through State Department contracts or publicly identified Defense contracts. "It's Blackwater via JSOC, and it's a classified no-bid [contract] approved on a rolling basis." The main JSOC/Blackwater facility in Karachi, according to the source, is nondescript: three trailers with various generators, satellite phones and computer systems are used as a makeshift operations center. "It's a very rudimentary operation," says the source. "I would compare it to [CIA] outposts in Kurdistan or any of the Special Forces outposts. It's very bare bones, and that's the point."
Blackwater's work for JSOC in Karachi is coordinated out of a Task Force based at Bagram Air Base in neighboring Afghanistan, according to the military intelligence source. While JSOC technically runs the operations in Karachi, he said, it is largely staffed by former US special operations soldiers working for a division of Blackwater, once known as Blackwater SELECT, and intelligence analysts working for a Blackwater affiliate, Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS), which is owned by Blackwater's founder, Erik Prince. The military source said that the name Blackwater SELECT may have been changed recently. Total Intelligence, which is run out of an office on the ninth floor of a building in the Ballston area of Arlington, Virginia, is staffed by former analysts and operatives from the CIA, DIA, FBI and other agencies. It is modeled after the CIA's counterterrorism center. In Karachi, TIS runs a "media-scouring/open-source network," according to the source. Until recently, Total Intelligence was run by two former top CIA officials, Cofer Black and Robert Richer, both of whom have left the company. In Pakistan, Blackwater is not using either its original name or its new moniker, Xe Services, according to the former Blackwater executive. "They are running most of their work through TIS because the other two [names] have such a stain on them," he said. Corallo, the Blackwater spokesperson, denied that TIS or any other division or affiliate of Blackwater has any personnel in Pakistan.
The US military intelligence source said that Blackwater's classified contracts keep getting renewed at the request of JSOC. Blackwater, he said, is already so deeply entrenched that it has become a staple of the US military operations in Pakistan. According to the former Blackwater executive, "The politics that go with the brand of BW is somewhat set aside because what you're doing is really one military guy to another." Blackwater's first known contract with the CIA for operations in Afghanistan was awarded in 2002 and was for work along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
One of the concerns raised by the military intelligence source is that some Blackwater personnel are being given rolling security clearances above their approved clearances. Using Alternative Compartmentalized Control Measures (ACCMs), he said, the Blackwater personnel are granted clearance to a Special Access Program, the bureaucratic term used to describe highly classified "black" operations. "With an ACCM, the security manager can grant access to you to be exposed to and operate within compartmentalized programs far above 'secret'--even though you have no business doing so," said the source. It allows Blackwater personnel that "do not have the requisite security clearance or do not hold a security clearance whatsoever to participate in classified operations by virtue of trust," he added. "Think of it as an ultra-exclusive level above top secret. That's exactly what it is: a circle of love." Blackwater, therefore, has access to "all source" reports that are culled in part from JSOC units in the field. "That's how a lot of things over the years have been conducted with contractors," said the source. "We have contractors that regularly see things that top policy-makers don't unless they ask."
According to the source, Blackwater has effectively marketed itself as a company whose operatives have "conducted lethal direct action missions and now, for a price, you can have your own planning cell. JSOC just ate that up," he said, adding, "They have a sizable force in Pakistan--not for any nefarious purpose if you really want to look at it that way--but to support a legitimate contract that's classified for JSOC." Blackwater's Pakistan JSOC contracts are secret and are therefore shielded from public oversight, he said. The source is not sure when the arrangement with JSOC began, but he says that a spin-off of Blackwater SELECT "was issued a no-bid contract for support to shooters for a JSOC Task Force and they kept extending it." Some of the Blackwater personnel, he said, work undercover as aid workers. "Nobody even gives them a second thought."
The military intelligence source said that the Blackwater/JSOC Karachi operation is referred to as "Qatar cubed," in reference to the US forward operating base in Qatar that served as the hub for the planning and implementation of the US invasion of Iraq. "This is supposed to be the brave new world," he says. "This is the Jamestown of the new millennium and it's meant to be a lily pad. You can jump off to Uzbekistan, you can jump back over the border, you can jump sideways, you can jump northwest. It's strategically located so that they can get their people wherever they have to without having to wrangle with the military chain of command in Afghanistan, which is convoluted. They don't have to deal with that because they're operating under a classified mandate."
In addition to planning drone strikes and operations against suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan for both JSOC and the CIA, the Blackwater team in Karachi also helps plan missions for JSOC inside Uzbekistan against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, according to the military intelligence source. Blackwater does not actually carry out the operations, he said, which are executed on the ground by JSOC forces. "That piqued my curiosity and really worries me because I don't know if you noticed but I was never told we are at war with Uzbekistan," he said. "So, did I miss something, did Rumsfeld come back into power?"

Pakistan's Military Contracting Maze

Blackwater, according to the military intelligence source, is not doing the actual killing as part of its work in Pakistan. "The SELECT personnel are not going into places with private aircraft and going after targets," he said. "It's not like Blackwater SELECT people are running around assassinating people." Instead, US Special Forces teams carry out the plans developed in part by Blackwater. The military intelligence source drew a distinction between the Blackwater operatives who work for the State Department, which he calls "Blackwater Vanilla," and the seasoned Special Forces veterans who work on the JSOC program. "Good or bad, there's a small number of people who know how to pull off an operation like that. That's probably a good thing," said the source. "It's the Blackwater SELECT people that have and continue to plan these types of operations because they're the only people that know how and they went where the money was. It's not trigger-happy fucks, like some of the PSD [Personal Security Detail] guys. These are not people that believe that Barack Obama is a socialist, these are not people that kill innocent civilians. They're very good at what they do."
The former Blackwater executive, when asked for confirmation that Blackwater forces were not actively killing people in Pakistan, said, "that's not entirely accurate." While he concurred with the military intelligence source's description of the JSOC and CIA programs, he pointed to another role Blackwater is allegedly playing in Pakistan, not for the US government but for Islamabad. According to the executive, Blackwater works on a subcontract for Kestral Logistics, a powerful Pakistani firm, which specializes in military logistical support, private security and intelligence consulting. It is staffed with former high-ranking Pakistani army and government officials. While Kestral's main offices are in Pakistan, it also has branches in several other countries.
A spokesperson for the US State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC), which is responsible for issuing licenses to US corporations to provide defense-related services to foreign governments or entities, would neither confirm nor deny for The Nation that Blackwater has a license to work in Pakistan or to work with Kestral. "We cannot help you," said department spokesperson David McKeeby after checking with the relevant DDTC officials. "You'll have to contact the companies directly." Blackwater's Corallo said the company has "no operations of any kind" in Pakistan other than the one employee working for the DoD. Kestral did not respond to inquiries from The Nation.
According to federal lobbying records, Kestral recently hired former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega, who served in that post from 2003 to 2005, to lobby the US government, including the State Department, USAID and Congress, on foreign affairs issues "regarding [Kestral's] capabilities to carry out activities of interest to the United States." Noriega was hired through his firm, Vision Americas, which he runs with Christina Rocca, a former CIA operations official who served as assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs from 2001 to 2006 and was deeply involved in shaping US policy toward Pakistan. In October 2009, Kestral paid Vision Americas $15,000 and paid a Vision Americas-affiliated firm, Firecreek Ltd., an equal amount to lobby on defense and foreign policy issues.
For years, Kestral has done a robust business in defense logistics with the Pakistani government and other nations, as well as top US defense companies. Blackwater owner Erik Prince is close with Kestral CEO Liaquat Ali Baig, according to the former Blackwater executive. "Ali and Erik have a pretty close relationship," he said. "They've met many times and struck a deal, and they [offer] mutual support for one another." Working with Kestral, he said, Blackwater has provided convoy security for Defense Department shipments destined for Afghanistan that would arrive in the port at Karachi. Blackwater, according to the former executive, would guard the supplies as they were transported overland from Karachi to Peshawar and then west through the Torkham border crossing, the most important supply route for the US military in Afghanistan.
According to the former executive, Blackwater operatives also integrate with Kestral's forces in sensitive counterterrorism operations in the North-West Frontier Province, where they work in conjunction with the Pakistani Interior Ministry's paramilitary force, known as the Frontier Corps (alternately referred to as "frontier scouts"). The Blackwater personnel are technically advisers, but the former executive said that the line often gets blurred in the field. Blackwater "is providing the actual guidance on how to do [counterterrorism operations] and Kestral's folks are carrying a lot of them out, but they're having the guidance and the overwatch from some BW guys that will actually go out with the teams when they're executing the job," he said. "You can see how that can lead to other things in the border areas." He said that when Blackwater personnel are out with the Pakistani teams, sometimes its men engage in operations against suspected terrorists. "You've got BW guys that are assisting... and they're all going to want to go on the jobs--so they're going to go with them," he said. "So, the things that you're seeing in the news about how this Pakistani military group came in and raided this house or did this or did that--in some of those cases, you're going to have Western folks that are right there at the house, if not in the house." Blackwater, he said, is paid by the Pakistani government through Kestral for consulting services. "That gives the Pakistani government the cover to say, 'Hey, no, we don't have any Westerners doing this. It's all local and our people are doing it.' But it gets them the expertise that Westerners provide for [counterterrorism]-related work."
The military intelligence source confirmed Blackwater works with the Frontier Corps, saying, "There's no real oversight. It's not really on people's radar screen."
In October, in response to Pakistani news reports that a Kestral warehouse in Islamabad was being used to store heavy weapons for Blackwater, the US Embassy in Pakistan released a statement denying the weapons were being used by "a private American security contractor." The statement said, "Kestral Logistics is a private logistics company that handles the importation of equipment and supplies provided by the United States to the Government of Pakistan. All of the equipment and supplies were imported at the request of the Government of Pakistan, which also certified the shipments."

Who is Behind the Drone Attacks?

Since President Barack Obama was inaugurated, the United States has expanded drone bombing raids in Pakistan. Obama first ordered a drone strike against targets in North and South Waziristan on January 23, and the strikes have been conducted consistently ever since. The Obama administration has now surpassed the number of Bush-era strikes in Pakistan and has faced fierce criticism from Pakistan and some US lawmakers over civilian deaths. A drone attack in June killed as many as sixty people attending a Taliban funeral.
In August, the New York Times reported that Blackwater works for the CIA at "hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the company's contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft." In February, The Times of London obtained a satellite image of a secret CIA airbase in Shamsi, in Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan, showing three drone aircraft. The New York Times also reported that the agency uses a secret base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to strike in Pakistan.
The military intelligence source says that the drone strike that reportedly killed Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, his wife and his bodyguards in Waziristan in August was a CIA strike, but that many others attributed in media reports to the CIA are actually JSOC strikes. "Some of these strikes are attributed to OGA [Other Government Agency, intelligence parlance for the CIA], but in reality it's JSOC and their parallel program of UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] because they also have access to UAVs. So when you see some of these hits, especially the ones with high civilian casualties, those are almost always JSOC strikes." The Pentagon has stated bluntly, "There are no US military strike operations being conducted in Pakistan."
The military intelligence source also confirmed that Blackwater continues to work for the CIA on its drone bombing program in Pakistan, as previously reported in the New York Times, but added that Blackwater is working on JSOC's drone bombings as well. "It's Blackwater running the program for both CIA and JSOC," said the source. When civilians are killed, "people go, 'Oh, it's the CIA doing crazy shit again unchecked.' Well, at least 50 percent of the time, that's JSOC [hitting] somebody they've identified through HUMINT [human intelligence] or they've culled the intelligence themselves or it's been shared with them and they take that person out and that's how it works."
The military intelligence source says that the CIA operations are subject to Congressional oversight, unlike the parallel JSOC bombings. "Targeted killings are not the most popular thing in town right now and the CIA knows that," he says. "Contractors and especially JSOC personnel working under a classified mandate are not [overseen by Congress], so they just don't care. If there's one person they're going after and there's thirty-four people in the building, thirty-five people are going to die. That's the mentality." He added, "They're not accountable to anybody and they know that. It's an open secret, but what are you going to do, shut down JSOC?"
In addition to working on covert action planning and drone strikes, Blackwater SELECT also provides private guards to perform the sensitive task of security for secret US drone bases, JSOC camps and Defense Intelligence Agency camps inside Pakistan, according to the military intelligence source.
Mosharraf Zaidi, a well-known Pakistani journalist who has served as a consultant for the UN and European Union in Pakistan and Afghanistan, says that the Blackwater/JSOC program raises serious questions about the norms of international relations. "The immediate question is, How do you define the active pursuit of military objectives in a country with which not only have you not declared war but that is supposedly a front-line non-NATO ally in the US struggle to contain extremist violence coming out of Afghanistan and the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan?" asks Zaidi, who is currently a columnist for The News, the biggest English-language daily in Pakistan. "Let's forget Blackwater for a second. What this is confirming is that there are US military operations in Pakistan that aren't about logistics or getting food to Bagram; that are actually about the exercise of physical violence, physical force inside of Pakistani territory."
JSOC: Rumsfeld and Cheney's Extra Special Force
Colonel Wilkerson said that he is concerned that with General McChrystal's elevation as the military commander of the Afghan war--which is increasingly seeping into Pakistan--there is a concomitant rise in JSOC's power and influence within the military structure. "I don't see how you can escape that; it's just a matter of the way the authority flows and the power flows, and it's inevitable, I think," Wilkerson told The Nation. He added, "I'm alarmed when I see execute orders and combat orders that go out saying that the supporting force is Central Command and the supported force is Special Operations Command," under which JSOC operates. "That's backward. But that's essentially what we have today."
From 2003 to 2008 McChrystal headed JSOC, which is headquartered at Pope Air Force Base and Fort Bragg in North Carolina, where Blackwater's 7,000-acre operating base is also situated. JSOC controls the Army's Delta Force, the Navy's SEAL Team 6, as well as the Army's 75th Ranger Regiment and 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, and the Air Force's 24th Special Tactics Squadron. JSOC performs strike operations, reconnaissance in denied areas and special intelligence missions. Blackwater, which was founded by former Navy SEALs, employs scores of veteran Special Forces operators--which several former military officials pointed to as the basis for Blackwater's alleged contracts with JSOC.
Since 9/11, many top-level Special Forces veterans have taken up employment with private firms, where they can make more money doing the highly specialized work they did in uniform. "The Blackwater individuals have the experience. A lot of these individuals are retired military, and they've been around twenty to thirty years and have experience that the younger Green Beret guys don't," said retired Army Lieut. Col. Jeffrey Addicott, a well-connected military lawyer who served as senior legal counsel for US Army Special Forces. "They're known entities. Everybody knows who they are, what their capabilities are, and they've got the experience. They're very valuable."
"They make much more money being the smarts of these operations, planning hits in various countries and basing it off their experience in Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia, Ethiopia," said the military intelligence source. "They were there for all of these things, they know what the hell they're talking about. And JSOC has unfortunately lost the institutional capability to plan within, so they hire back people that used to work for them and had already planned and executed these [types of] operations. They hired back people that jumped over to Blackwater SELECT and then pay them exorbitant amounts of money to plan future operations. It's a ridiculous revolving door."
While JSOC has long played a central role in US counterterrorism and covert operations, military and civilian officials who worked at the Defense and State Departments during the Bush administration described in interviews with The Nation an extremely cozy relationship that developed between the executive branch (primarily through Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) and JSOC. During the Bush era, Special Forces turned into a virtual stand-alone operation that acted outside the military chain of command and in direct coordination with the White House. Throughout the Bush years, it was largely General McChrystal who ran JSOC. "What I was seeing was the development of what I would later see in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Special Operations forces would operate in both theaters without the conventional commander even knowing what they were doing," said Colonel Wilkerson. "That's dangerous, that's very dangerous. You have all kinds of mess when you don't tell the theater commander what you're doing."
Wilkerson said that almost immediately after assuming his role at the State Department under Colin Powell, he saw JSOC being politicized and developing a close relationship with the executive branch. He saw this begin, he said, after his first Delta Force briefing at Fort Bragg. "I think Cheney and Rumsfeld went directly into JSOC. I think they went into JSOC at times, perhaps most frequently, without the SOCOM [Special Operations] commander at the time even knowing it. The receptivity in JSOC was quite good," says Wilkerson. "I think Cheney was actually giving McChrystal instructions, and McChrystal was asking him for instructions." He said the relationship between JSOC and Cheney and Rumsfeld "built up initially because Rumsfeld didn't get the responsiveness. He didn't get the can-do kind of attitude out of the SOCOM commander, and so as Rumsfeld was wont to do, he cut him out and went straight to the horse's mouth. At that point you had JSOC operating as an extension of the [administration] doing things the executive branch--read: Cheney and Rumsfeld--wanted it to do. This would be more or less carte blanche. You need to do it, do it. It was very alarming for me as a conventional soldier."
Wilkerson said the JSOC teams caused diplomatic problems for the United States across the globe. "When these teams started hitting capital cities and other places all around the world, [Rumsfeld] didn't tell the State Department either. The only way we found out about it is our ambassadors started to call us and say, 'Who the hell are these six-foot-four white males with eighteen-inch biceps walking around our capital cities?' So we discovered this, we discovered one in South America, for example, because he actually murdered a taxi driver, and we had to get him out of there real quick. We rendered him--we rendered him home."
As part of their strategy, Rumsfeld and Cheney also created the Strategic Support Branch (SSB), which pulled intelligence resources from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA for use in sensitive JSOC operations. The SSB was created using "reprogrammed" funds "without explicit congressional authority or appropriation," according to the Washington Post. The SSB operated outside the military chain of command and circumvented the CIA's authority on clandestine operations. Rumsfeld created it as part of his war to end "near total dependence on CIA." Under US law, the Defense Department is required to report all deployment orders to Congress. But guidelines issued in January 2005 by former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone stated that Special Operations forces may "conduct clandestine HUMINT operations...before publication" of a deployment order. This effectively gave Rumsfeld unilateral control over clandestine operations.
The military intelligence source said that when Rumsfeld was defense secretary, JSOC was deployed to commit some of the "darkest acts" in part to keep them concealed from Congress. "Everything can be justified as a military operation versus a clandestine intelligence performed by the CIA, which has to be informed to Congress," said the source. "They were aware of that and they knew that, and they would exploit it at every turn and they took full advantage of it. They knew they could act extra-legally and nothing would happen because A, it was sanctioned by DoD at the highest levels, and B, who was going to stop them? They were preparing the battlefield, which was on all of the PowerPoints: 'Preparing the Battlefield.'"
The significance of the flexibility of JSOC's operations inside Pakistan versus the CIA's is best summed up by Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "Every single intelligence operation and covert action must be briefed to the Congress," she said. "If they are not, that is a violation of the law."

Blackwater: Company Non Grata in Pakistan

For months, the Pakistani media has been flooded with stories about Blackwater's alleged growing presence in the country. For the most part, these stories have been ignored by the US press and denounced as lies or propaganda by US officials in Pakistan. But the reality is that, although many of the stories appear to be wildly exaggerated, Pakistanis have good reason to be concerned about Blackwater's operations in their country. It is no secret in Washington or Islamabad that Blackwater has been a central part of the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan and that the company has been involved--almost from the beginning of the "war on terror"--with clandestine US operations. Indeed, Blackwater is accepting applications for contractors fluent in Urdu and Punjabi. The US Ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, has denied Blackwater's presence in the country, stating bluntly in September, "Blackwater is not operating in Pakistan." In her trip to Pakistan in October, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dodged questions from the Pakistani press about Blackwater's rumored Pakistani operations. Pakistan's interior minister, Rehman Malik, said on November 21 he will resign if Blackwater is found operating anywhere in Pakistan.
The Christian Science Monitor recently reported that Blackwater "provides security for a US-backed aid project" in Peshawar, suggesting the company may be based out of the Pearl Continental, a luxury hotel the United States reportedly is considering purchasing to use as a consulate in the city. "We have no contracts in Pakistan," Blackwater spokesperson Stacey DeLuke said recently. "We've been blamed for all that has gone wrong in Peshawar, none of which is true, since we have absolutely no presence there."
Reports of Blackwater's alleged presence in Karachi and elsewhere in the country have been floating around the Pakistani press for months. Hamid Mir, a prominent Pakistani journalist who rose to fame after his 1997 interview with Osama bin Laden, claimed in a recent interview that Blackwater is in Karachi. "The US [intelligence] agencies think that a number of Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders are hiding in Karachi and Peshawar," he said. "That is why [Blackwater] agents are operating in these two cities." Ambassador Patterson has said that the claims of Mir and other Pakistani journalists are "wildly incorrect," saying they had compromised the security of US personnel in Pakistan. On November 20 the Washington Times, citing three current and former US intelligence officials, reported that Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban, has "found refuge from potential U.S. attacks" in Karachi "with the assistance of Pakistan's intelligence service."
In September, the Pakistani press covered a report on Blackwater allegedly submitted by Pakistan's intelligence agencies to the federal interior ministry. In the report, the intelligence agencies reportedly allege that Blackwater was provided houses by a federal minister who is also helping them clear shipments of weapons and vehicles through Karachi's Port Qasim on the coast of the Arabian Sea. The military intelligence source did not confirm this but did say, "The port jives because they have a lot of [former] SEALs and they would revert to what they know: the ocean, instead of flying stuff in."
The Nation cannot independently confirm these allegations and has not seen the Pakistani intelligence report. But according to Pakistani press coverage, the intelligence report also said Blackwater has acquired "bungalows" in the Defense Housing Authority in the city. According to the DHA website, it is a large residential estate originally established "for the welfare of the serving and retired officers of the Armed Forces of Pakistan." Its motto is: "Home for Defenders." The report alleges Blackwater is receiving help from local government officials in Karachi and is using vehicles with license plates traditionally assigned to members of the national and provincial assemblies, meaning local law enforcement will not stop them.
The use of private companies like Blackwater for sensitive operations such as drone strikes or other covert work undoubtedly comes with the benefit of plausible deniability that places an additional barrier in an already deeply flawed system of accountability. When things go wrong, it's the contractors' fault, not the government's. But the widespread use of contractors also raises serious legal questions, particularly when they are a part of lethal, covert actions. "We are using contractors for things that in the past might have been considered to be a violation of the Geneva Convention," said Lt. Col. Addicott, who now runs the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas. "In my opinion, we have pressed the envelope to the breaking limit, and it's almost a fiction that these guys are not in offensive military operations." Addicott added, "If we were subjected to the International Criminal Court, some of these guys could easily be picked up, charged with war crimes and put on trial. That's one of the reasons we're not members of the International Criminal Court."
If there is one quality that has defined Blackwater over the past decade, it is the ability to survive against the odds while simultaneously reinventing and rebranding itself. That is most evident in Afghanistan, where the company continues to work for the US military, the CIA and the State Department despite intense criticism and almost weekly scandals. Blackwater's alleged Pakistan operations, said the military intelligence source, are indicative of its new frontier. "Having learned its lessons after the private security contracting fiasco in Iraq, Blackwater has shifted its operational focus to two venues: protecting things that are in danger and anticipating other places we're going to go as a nation that are dangerous," he said. "It's as simple as that."

Family wins terrorist attack compensation but cannot cash cheque

Jalees Andrabi, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: November 29. 2009 11:50PM UAE / November 29. 2009 7:50PM GMT

NEW DELHI // While people across the world have been remembering the victims of last November’s Mumbai terrorist attack, a Pakistani family of victims of the Samjhauta Express train blasts in 2007 is still struggling to get compensation money from the Indian government.

Fifty-year-old Rana Shaukat Ali, a shopkeeper from Samnabad in Faisalabad, is in New Delhi along with his wife, Ruksana, and their only surviving daughter trying to get the money that was awarded by an Indian court.

The couple lost five of their six children in the twin blasts, which killed 68 people including 42 Pakistani nationals, onboard the “India-Pakistan friendship train” on February 18, 2007 near the Indian city of Panipat, 100km from New Delhi.

Mr Ali and his family had come to India to attend the wedding ceremony of their niece. The couple lost three sons and two daughters in the blast. One-year old Aqsa survived with minor injuries.

In October, Indian Railways issued 10 cheques worth two million rupees (Dh157,000) to Mr Ali; however, his Pakistani nationality did not allow him to cash the cheques in India. He was forced to pursue the case through the labyrinth of Indian bureaucracy.

“We have been trailing the compensation case with the Indian Railways claims tribunal for more than two years now. Finally, the tribunal court gave a judgment and awarded compensation to us,” Mr Ali said. “We came to know through my brother and a friend that the court has given a judgment in our favour. We came to India last month to collect the cheques, but being a Pakistani I cannot open an account in India and Pakistani banks will not accept this cheque. There is no way I can transfer the money to Pakistan.”

The Indian Reserve Bank bars Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationals without special permission from opening bank accounts in India. Mr Ali, with the help of a voluntarily organisation, South Asian Forum for People Against Terror (Safpat) has petitioned the Indian external minister, S M Krishna, to intervene in the matter.

“The cheques issued to us are valid until December 19. Unless the Indian government doesn’t rethink, it will be impossible for us to use this money,” he said.

Mr Ali said his chances of receiving the money are quite low during his current stay in India because his visa will expire this week. Although he has applied for an extension, he said he will probably not be allowed to continue his stay in India.

“We want to give a secure future to our daughter. We cannot repair the loss by the compensation money, but it will secure her future. I never wanted to come to India and pursue the case as it snatched everything from me, but it was all for my daughter’s sake,” Mr Ali said.

“I cannot forget the sight when I saw the dead bodies of my children turned into a heap of charcoal. It took me hours to recognise their bodies. They were burnt beyond recognition.”

The Indian government had blamed Pakistan-based militant groups of carrying out the train attack.

However, Indian police charged the former army Lt Col P S Purohit and several Hindu militants of carrying out the Samjhauta train explosions. The men, who are in custody, are also accused of carrying out a series of blasts in the Indian state of Maharashtra.

“I am dismayed over the pace of investigations into the attacks. The Indian government should speed up their investigations and bring the perpetrators of the attack to justice,” Mr Ali said.

Last year, the Mumbai police chief, Hemant Karkare, filed a charge sheet against Mr Purohit saying he had helped carry out the blasts. After Karkare’s death in the Mumbai attacks, investigations have been stalled, Mr Ali claimed.

Ruksana Ali said she still dreads the thought of the explosions. “We lost everything in a moment; every time I pray, I seek Allah’s mercy on the people who killed my children. It will be difficult to overcome with the thought of losing five children, but it was Allah’s will and Aqsa’s presence which helped me to survive,” she said.

Notwithstanding the political animosities between India and Pakistan, Mr Ali and his wife participated in the sit-in to commemorate the first anniversary of the Mumbai attacks on November 26 that was organised by Safpat in New Delhi.

“We are here to share our grief with the victims of the Mumbai attacks, Delhi blasts and all terror attacks happening in India and Pakistan. Terrorism has no borders, whether it is Mumbai or Karachi, innocents are killed,” Mr Ali said.

foreign.desk@thenational.ae