“Western intelligence agencies have accessed the computer and email account of Lashkar’s communications chief, Zarar Shah, and found a list of possible targets, only 20 of which were in India,” the Guardian reported.

Two of the November 2008 attack’s key planners – Shah and Lashkar’s operations chief, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi – are now in police custody in Pakistan, it said. Islamabad’s decision to bring criminal charges against the nine men accused of involvement in the Mumbai attack has partly placated Indian officials, according to the newspaper. But officials in New Delhi have been warning that they want to see people brought to justice for terrorist acts, it said.

“If the West can prosecute people for crimes against humanity in The Hague or use rendition to interrogate them in undisclosed locations then what is stopping them now? After all, [western] citizens were killed in Mumbai too,” an official was quoted.

The paper said the US had been trying behind the scenes to coordinate intelligence exchanges between the two nuclear-armed rivals. Adding that the CIA had worked hard to be seen to help New Delhi – including by recovering phone numbers deleted by the terrorists on their satellite phones.

The fallout following Mumbai had destabilised the President Asif Ali Zardari’s government. It was reported that the “intelligence agencies have warned that Mumbai raises the spectre of a new style of terrorist assault. Nine of the gunmen were killed – but the lone survivor has given Indian investigators a full confession that the assault was planned in Pakistan by Lashkar,” the Gurdaian said.

It said “there has been some speculation that raids in Spain which netted 12 men – an Indian and 11 Pakistanis – were a result of the investigations into Lashkar’s role in the Mumbai attacks”. The Guardian quotes analysts as saying that “the computer list is more of a statement of intent because Lashkar would need time to set up terrorist cells in so many places”. “Lashkar is an increasingly prominent terrorist group within the jihadi community but I am sceptical of it being able to act globally and extensively on its own,” it quoted Maria Kuusisto, an analyst covering Pakistan and Afghanistan for the Eurasia Group, a political consultancy in London.

[Source: Daily Times]