India faces up to the terror within

MUMBAI - Even as the first suspects in the Mumbai bombings were named, India was yesterday facing the possibility that Wednesday's attacks (NZT) were carried out, at least in part, by its own citizens.

Police yesterday released photographs of the first two suspects, named as Sayyad Zabiuddin and Zulfeqar Fayyaz.

Their nationalities were not identified, but Indian intelligence sources say they suspect the seven coordinated bombings on Wednesday were a joint operation by Pakistan-based militants and an entirely Indian organisation, the Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).

Just as Londoners a year ago faced the shock of learning that the 7th July bombers were British, Indians may have to deal with the realisation that the Mumbai attacks were partly the work of an enemy within - an Indian militant group which has openly declared jihad against secular India.

More than 350 people were detained by police for questioning in connection with the bombings in raids across Mumbai yesterday. But the raids appeared to be a very loose operation, with most of those detained released without charge after a few hours.

Indian intelligence is investigating the possibility the bombings were carried out by SIMI and the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e Toiba, according to sources. Both organisations have issued denials and condemned the bombings.

"So far it looks like there was a substantial involvement of Lashkar-e-Toiba with local support," D.K. Shankaran, the most senior bureaucrat in Maharashtra state, said publicly yesterday.

But it may be the suspicions surrounding the homegrown SIMI which prove more disturbing for India. Founded in 1977 in Uttar Pradesh, SIMI has declared jihad against secular India, with the avowed aim of converting the entire country to Islam.

The group has repeatedly praised Osama bin Laden as a Muslim hero, and has been banned in India since 2002.

Police in Uttar Pradesh were raiding SIMI's known hideouts yesterday, according to reports.

India's Supreme Court rejected a plea for the ban on the group to be overturned just five days before Wednesday's bombings.

The group recruits entirely from inside India. Although it is nominally a students' movement, it accepts members up to the age of 30. There may be political reasons for the Indian intelligence establishment to point towards SIMI.

In what is widely seen as an attempt to court Muslim votes, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, has been pushing for the ban on the group to be lifted. Yesterday he insisted SIMI is "not a terrorist organisation".

But it is not the first time SIMI has been linked to militant attacks in Mumbai.

In 2003, Mumbai police named both SIMI and Lashkar as suspects in a smaller bombing on Mumbai's train network, and later in the year six SIMI activists were arrested with lethal chemicals and arms and ammunition in their possession.

Mumbai police yesterday denied reports that raids across the city in which more than 350 people were detained specifically targeted SIMI.

A senior officer in Malvandi police station, one of those that carried out the raids, said they were a general dragnet to pick up anyone suspicious, and the majority of the 141 detained at Malvandi had been released without charge.

This sort of "round up the usual suspects" tactic is commonly used by police in India after major incidents.

Lashkar, the other group at the centre of suspicions, has long been acknowledged as the most dangerous militant group operating in Kashmir.

Often wrongly described as a Kashmiri group, it is based in Pakistan and most of its membership is recruited there, a fact not lost on India, which demanded Pakistan "dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism" on its territory in the wake of the bombings.

Lashkar used to be closely linked to Pakistan's ISI intelligence, but the Pakistani establishment says those links have been severed.

Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Khurshid Kasuri, reacted angrily to Indian criticism, saying: "You can't really blame everything on Pakistan; it's very unfair."

A man claiming to represent Al Qaeda telephoned a news agency in Kashmir yesterday and claimed the organisation has established a presence in India for the first time.

He did not claim responsibility for the Mumbai bombings, but called on Muslims in India to "adopt a path of freedom and jihad".

The name he gave for his group, Al Qaeda Jammu and Kashmir, appears to be a deliberate echo of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Al Qaeda in Iraq. He named the leader of the new group as Abu Adbul Rehman Ansari.

It was impossible to verify his claims last night, but the Indian army said it was investigating.

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