India fingers Mumbai 'mastermind'

Just two days before hitting the city, the group of 10 terrorists who ravaged India's financial capital communicated with Yusuf Muzammil and four other Lashkar leaders via a satellite phone that they left behind on a fishing trawler they hijacked to get to Mumbai, a senior Mumbai police official told The Wall Street Journal. The entire group also underwent rigorous training in a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, the official said.

Mr. Muzammil had earlier been in touch with an Indian Muslim extremist who scoped out Mumbai locations for possible attack before he was arrested early this year, said another senior Indian police official. The Indian man, Faheem Ahmed Ansari, had in his possession layouts drawn up for the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel and Mumbai's main railway station, both prime targets of last week's attack, the police official said.

Mr. Ansari, who also made sketches and maps of locations in southern Mumbai that weren't attacked, had met Mr. Muzammil and trained at the same Lashkar camp as the terrorists in last week's attack, an official said.

US intelligence isn't quite as sure that Muzammil is behind the plot but they say he is "definitely on the radar."

It turns out that US intelligence also warned India of an attack by sea back in September. And Indian authorities arrested two men belonging to the Lashkar group in 2007 who confessed they had taken the same route to Mumbai as the terrorists who struck last week.

This is very bad for Indian authorities because a specific warning had actually gone out to hotels as a result of the bombing of the Marriott last month in Islamabad.

It is also very bad for the Pakistani government who outlawed the Lashkar group in 2002 but have done precious little to curtail their activities. The Indian government wants Pakistan to capture Muzammil and his compatriots and hand them over to India. Easier said than done.

Looking at what is going on in Pakistan, one is forced to conclude that the government is either unable or unwilling to take on the task of ridding their country of extremists who threaten other nations. It won't take more than one or two more Mumbai-type attacks before the world overcomes its reluctance to intervene in the affairs of another sovereign country and is forced to act.