Washington: In the run up to the hijacking
of the Indian Airlines Flight 814 by Pakistan-based terrorist
outfits, the ISI had made Nepal a hub of anti-India terror
activities from where it pushed huge quantities of RDX into
the country, latest US cables released by WikiLeaks say.
In these cable, US officials have conceded that it is the
ISI which created various terrorist fronts to carry out
terrorist activities in India, including the bomb blasts in
the busy areas of Connaught Place, Lajpat Nagar in New Delhi
and several cities across the country.
One of such organisation created by ISI in Pakistan was
Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Front (JKIF), with its main base in
Kathmandu.
"To dispatch men and material and to execute explosions
in India, Kathmandu was invariably made the nodal point and
JKIF exploited the vulnerable Kathmandu-based Kashmiri
businessmen for such activities since they had a readymade and
clean past.
JKIF kingpin Javed Krawah himself used to run a carpet
business in Kathmandu," said the US cable signed off by none
other than the then US Ambassador to India, Frank Wisner.
JKIF, says the cable dated July 8, 1997, was controlled
from Pakistan by ISI and Tiger Memon, the prime accused in
1993 Mumbai blast case.
"Their contact in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir was Bilal
Beg, who was running an indoctrination camp near Muzaffarabad,
funded extensively by the ISI to carry out terrorist acts in
India.
One Colonel Farooq of Pakistan ISI tasked Bilal Beg and
Tiger Memon to utilize Kathmandu-based activists Lateef and
Javed Krawah to set off blasts in Delhi before the Lok Sabha
elections," it said. According to the cable, a team of committed JKIF cadres
were given a two week specialised capsule course in explosives
near the Afghan border in March April 1996.
In May 21, 1996; this JKIF team set off a very high
intensity explosion at Lajpat Nagar in which 13 persons were
killed and 40 injured.
"The RDX used in this blast was brought from Kathmandu,"
the cable said.
The subsequent explosion in a Rajasthan roadways bus near
Dausa on May 22, 1996 was also engineers by the JKIF.
"Another JKIF team under the leadership of Abdul Gani,
AKA Assadullah, was sent to execute a bomb blast in
Ahmedabad," it said.
JKIF again planned a chain of explosions in Delhi before
Republic Day 1997 at the behest of Pakistan ISI and Tiger
Memon, the cable said.
According to the US cable, JKIF was formed in September
1995 by one Sajjad Ahmed Kenu, who was a well know activists
of Ikhwan-ul-Musalmeen (IUM).
Sajjad Kenu had escaped from Sri Nagar Jail in 1995 and
had resurfaced as the supreme commander of the JKIF in 1995.
Since its inception, the JKIF had been under considerable
pressure from its Pakistan-based leadership t carry out bomb
blasts outside J&K, particularly in Delhi, the cable said.
PTI
