New Delhi:
India is getting crucial information from 26/11 handler Abu Hamza (aka Abu Jundal) who has been deported from Saudi Arabia. Abu Hamza has told interrogators that during 26/11, a control room was set up in Karachi near the city's international airport. This became the base camp from where six handlers and commanders of the Lashkar-e-Taiba remote-controlled the ten men who tore through Mumbai, attacking its landmarks in a siege that would kill 166 people.
(Who is Abu Hamza?)Abu Hamza has said the control room was located in the VIP area between the airport, the Malir cantonment and Quadiabad. India will use this to argue that this proves "state actors" from Pakistan were aware of the attacks being unleashed upon Mumbai.
Abu Hamza has also allegedly told interrogators in Delhi that while he and five other handlers tutored the terrorists in Mumbai on satellite phones, Lashkar commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi supervised the operation in the control room.
He has also reportedly referred to the "
Waris" or heir or the next big thing of the Pakistani forces, who was present and in-charge Indian officials feel this could be Sajid Mir, an ISI agent. Mir has been described as a handler by David Coleman Headley, the Pakistani national arrested in the US for his role in surveying Mumbai on behalf of the Lashkar ahead of 26/11.