The voice of one of the accused in the Mumbai attacks of 2008 matched that of a handler who directed the terrorists involved in the attacks, a prosecution witness told an Anti Terrorism Court conducting the trial of seven suspects on Saturday.
Inspector Nisar Ahmed Jadoon of the Federal Investigation Agency also provided details of raids conducted on Lashkar-e-Tayyaba camps in Karachi where the attackers had trained before the attacks, to ATC Judge Shahid Rafique.
Jadoon said the voice of the accused matched that of a handler who directed the 10 attackers in Mumbai from a camp in Pakistan. Defence lawyer Khwaja Sultan, however, questioned how the prosecution had matched the voice as the FIA did not have voice samples of the seven suspects. Pakistani laws do not allow authorities to obtain voice samples without the permission of suspects and Interior Minister Rehman Malik had cited this as a reason for not providing India with the voice samples.
During his deposition, Jadoon told the judge that the banned LT had set up three training camps in Karachi that were raided by an FIA team after the Mumbai attacks. None of the accused was present in the camps at the time of the raids, Jadoon said, adding that no incriminating evidence, including weapons, bomb-making material or documents, was found in the camps.
He said only some gym equipments were found. The defence lawyer then contended that the FIA was trying to pass off private residences with physical fitness gear as training camps. The prosecution will present five more witnesses on August 27. In a related development, defence lawyers today decided not to press the court to act on their application for contempt of court proceedings against the interior minister for announcing that a judicial commission would visit India in connection with the Mumbai attacks before the court decided the matter.
The judge, however, directed prosecutors to file the minister’s response to a notice issued to him at the last hearing on August 10. The notice was issued after defence lawyers submitted a petition that contended Malik had committed contempt of court by stating in a media interview last month that the Pakistani commission would go to India within days, even though the court had not decided on the formation of the commission.
The judge also asked prosecutors to submit a complete record of the correspondence between the Indian and Pakistani governments on the issue of the Pakistani commission visiting India to interview key persons associated with the Mumbai attacks, including the police officer who led the investigation into the incident and the magistrate who recorded the confession of Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving attacker.
