New Delhi:
A complaint made often by India, and one powered by new evidence, was tossed out by Pakistan today. "We reject any insinuation against any state agencies of Pakistan in any terror attack in India," said Pakistan's Foreign Secretary, Jalil Abbas Jilani, who was in Delhi.
At a police station just 20 minutes away
, also in Delhi, new revelations from Abu Jundal, who played a critical role in the 26/11 attacks, provided India with more information.
Jundal, who was deported from Saudi Arabia to Delhi last month, is being interrogated by Indian intelligence officials every day, about what he saw, heard and did in a control room in Karachi which served as the headquarters for India's worst-ever terror attack - 166 people died after a three-day siege by ten gunmen in Mumbai in 2008.
Jundal was one of five handlers who walked the men in Mumbai through the landmarks they targeted. He has said a man referred to by him and the others as Major Sameer visited the control room while Mumbai was being ravaged. The Major allegedly passed on orders to Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a senior commander of the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, who was arrested after 26/11 by Pakistan.
Pakistani-American David Headley, who has been convicted in the US of scouting targets in Mumbai for the Lashkar ahead of the attacks, has also identified Sameer Ali as a major in the ISI who had recruited him. Jundal has also talked of Sajid Mir as a motivator and organizer. Headley had told a Chicago court last year that Mir helped the Lashkar recruit foreign members. Mir was also believed to be the handler of a Frenchman accused of plotting an attack in Australia soon after the September 11 attacks. French judge Jean-Louis Brugiere, who investigated the case, said he believed Mir was an officer of the Pakistani military.
Jundal has said that Lakhvi had a house within a camp for terrorists at Bait-ul-Mujahideen near Muzaffarabad. Here, the Lashkar commander stayed with his three wives.
Jundal has told Indian officials that after 26/11, the control room in Karachi was raided and those who had been based there were asked to disperse. After Lakhvi's arrest, a handler for 26/11 named Muzammil took over as the Lashkar chief. He allegedly took Jundal to Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir to meet an officer of the ISI who was referred to by the terrorists as Colonel Hamza. The ISI officer then gave instructions to Jundal to stop using his phone and to be careful about where he was seen.
Jundal then obtained a Pakistani passport in the name of a Riyasat Ali and left for Saudi Arabia in March or April of 2011.