Pakistan and the Mumbai Attacks: The Untold Story

Mumbai, India
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

by Sebastian Rotella ProPublica

This story was published as part of Amazon’s Kindle Singles program, and is available for reading on that device [1].

On a November night two years ago, a young American rabbi and his pregnant wife finished dinner at their home in the mega-city of Mumbai.

Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg had come to India on a religious mission. They had established India’s first outpost of Chabad Lubavitch, the Orthodox Jewish organization, in a six-story tower overlooking a shantytown. The Chabad House offered a synagogue, a cyber-café, two floors of guest rooms, India’s biggest Hebrew library and a dining room that could seat 50 for festive meals. The Holtzbergs’ guests that evening were two American rabbis, an Israeli grandmother and a Mexican tourist.

Hundreds of miles away in Pakistan, a youthful terrorist chief named Sajid Mir was preparing a different sort of religious mission. With the support of Pakistan’s intelligence service, Mir had spent two years using a Pakistani-American businessman named David Coleman Headley to conduct meticulous reconnaissance on Mumbai, according to investigators and court documents. He had selected iconic targets and the Chabad House, a seemingly obscure choice, but one that ensured that Jews and Americans would be casualties.

On Nov. 26, 2008, Mir sat among half-a-dozen militant chiefs in a safe house in Karachi tracking an attack team as its dinghy approached the Mumbai waterfront. The Lashkar-i-Taiba terrorist group had made Mir the project manager of its biggest strike ever, the crowning achievement of his career as a holy warrior.

The 10 gunmen went ashore and split into five teams. His voice crisp and steady, Mir directed the slaughter by phone from his command post, relaying detailed instructions to his fighters. About 10:25 p.m., gunmen stormed the Chabad House. They shot the Holtzbergs and the visiting rabbis, took the Israeli grandmother and Mexican tourist hostage and barricaded themselves on an upper floor.

Mir told his men to try to trade the hostages for a gunman who had been captured. Mir spoke directly to the Mexican hostage, 50-year-old Norma Rabinovich, who had been preparing to move to Israel to join her adult children.

Mir soothed the sobbing woman in accented but smooth English.

“Save your energy for good days,” Mir told her during the call intercepted by Indian intelligence. “If they contact right now, maybe you gonna, you know, celebrate your Sabbath with your family.”

The prisoner swap failed. Mir ordered the gunman to “get rid” of Rabinovich.

“Stand her up on this side of your door,” he said. “Shoot her such that the bullet goes right through her head and out the other side…Do it. I’m listening…Do it, in God’s name.”

The three-day siege of Mumbai left 166 dead and 308 wounded. Twenty-six of the dead were foreigners, including six Americans. The attacks inflamed tension between Pakistan and India at a time when the nuclear-armed foes were trying to improve their relationship. The repercussions complicated the U.S. battle against Islamic extremism in South Asia and thrust Lashkar into the global spotlight.

More than two years later, Mir and his victims are at the center of a wrenching national-security dilemma confronting the Obama administration. The question, simply put, is whether the larger interests of the United States in maintaining good relations with Pakistan will permit Mir and other suspects to get away with one of the most devastating terrorist attacks in recent history.

Despite the diplomatic sensitivities, administration officials say they are pursuing those responsible.

“The U.S. government is completely determined to see justice done in the case,” said a senior U.S. counterterrorism official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of pending prosecutions. “Sometimes it takes time.”

For more than six months, ProPublica has examined the investigation of the attacks and previous cases documenting the rise of Lashkar. This account is based on interviews with more than two dozen law enforcement, intelligence and diplomatic officials from the United States, India, Pakistan, France, Britain, Australia and Israel, including front-line investigators. ProPublica also interviewed associates and relatives of suspects and victims, some of whom had not discussed the case with journalists, and reviewed foreign and U.S. case files, some of them previously undisclosed.

These documents and interviews paint the fullest portrait yet of Mir, a mysterious figure whose global trail traces Lashkar’s evolution. His name has surfaced in investigations on four continents, his web reaching as far as suburban Virginia. Fleeting glimpses of him appear in case files and communications intercepts. A French court even convicted him in absentia in 2007. But he remains free and dangerous, according to U.S. and Indian officials.

Mir has close ties to Pakistan’s security forces and may have been an officer in the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI). The ISI has been accused for years of playing a “double game”: acting as a front-line U.S. ally in the fight against terror while supporting selected terrorist groups. The Mumbai case provides the first detailed inside account of how that game is played, thanks to the confession of Headley, Mir’s American operative, a colorful character in a story of global intrigue.

U.S. investigators are persuaded that ISI officers recruited and trained Headley in spying techniques, then ran him as an agent in tandem with Lashkar. Pakistani military officers funded and directed Headley’s reconnaissance in India, supplied tactical advice for the Mumbai attack and participated in a follow-up plot against Denmark, according to U.S. and Indian officials.

ProPublica’s investigation leads to another disturbing revelation: Despite isolated voices of concern, for years the U.S. intelligence community was slow to focus on Lashkar and detect the extent of its determination to strike Western targets. During that period, Washington largely accepted Pakistan’s quiet tolerance of Lashkar, which unlike its allies has not attacked the Pakistani state. Most U.S. officials admit that counterterrorism agencies grasped the dimensions of the threat only after the Mumbai attacks.

The FBI investigation into the killings of the Americans has focused on a half-dozen accused masterminds who are still at large: Mir, top Lashkar chiefs and a man thought to be a major in the ISI. U.S. officials say they have urged Islamabad to arrest those suspects.

“We put consistent pressure on the Pakistanis to deal with Lashkar and do so at the highest levels,” said the senior U.S. counterterrorism official. “There has been no lack of clarity in our message.”

But officials acknowledge that the response to the Mumbai attacks has been insufficient. The effort to bring to justice the masterminds – under a law that makes terrorist attacks against Americans overseas a crime – faces obstacles. A U.S. prosecution could implicate Pakistani military chiefs who, at minimum, have allowed Lashkar to operate freely. Pressure on Pakistan to confront both the military and Lashkar could damage counterterrorism efforts.

“It’s a balancing act,” a high-ranking U.S. law enforcement official said. “We can only push so far. It’s very political. Sajid Mir is too powerful for them to go after. Too well-connected. We need the Pakistanis to go after the Taliban and al-Qaeda.”

Pakistani officials told ProPublica that they have no information on Mir. They denied allegations that the ISI supports Lashkar. They point out that hundreds of ISI officers have been killed in clashes with Islamic militants.

“Allegations of ISI’s cadres operating in connivance with the militants…are based on malicious intent,” said a senior Pakistani official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. ISI “remains top-to-bottom transparent and rests under the complete control of the civilian government…There is no question that the government thinks that all militants are enemies of the state.”

Pakistan has charged Lashkar’s military chief and six less-influential suspects in the Mumbai attacks. But the trial has stalled, raising fears among U.S. and Indian officials that the prosecution will collapse in a court system that rarely convicts accused extremists.

The U.S. investigation turned up 320 potential targets abroad – only 20 of them in India – including U.S., British and Indian embassies, government buildings, tourist sites and global financial centers, officials say. Many of the targets were scouted by Headley, who roamed the world on terrorist missions despite repeated warnings about him to U.S. agents from spouses and associates. The failure to stop him results partly from a lack of attention to Lashkar, experts say.

“There should have been a recognition that Lashkar had the desire and the potential to attack the West and that we needed to get up to speed on this group,” said Charles Faddis, a retired CIA chief of counterterrorist operations in South Asia and other hot spots. “It was a mistake to dismiss it as just a threat to India.”

Today, Mir personifies Lashkar’s evolving danger. The group’s longtime ties to the security forces have made it more professional and potentially more menacing than al-Qaeda. Recent intelligence shows Lashkar remains intent on striking the West and that the group increasingly blurs together with al-Qaeda and other networks in the jihadist cauldron of Pakistan, according to Western anti-terror officials.

“Lashkar is not just a tool of the ISI, but an ally of al-Qaeda that participates in its global jihad,” said Jean-Louis Bruguière, a French judge who investigated Mir. “Today Pakistan is the heart of the terrorist threat. And it may be too late to do anything about it.”

Lashkar’s Beginnings

For more than a decade, Sajid Mir has operated in a murky underworld of spies, soldiers and terrorists.

An Interpol notice last year seeking his arrest illustrates confusion about basic facts of his life. The Indian warrant identifies him as Sajid Majid, but most investigators still call him Sajid Mir, saying Majid may be his true name or one of several aliases. Interpol says his birthdate is Jan. 1, 1978, which would make him 32. But Headley, his star operative, told Indian investigators Mir was born in 1976, according to a 119-page report on his interrogation in Chicago last year by India’s National Investigation Agency. Most investigators think he is in his mid to late thirties.

Mir’s father was born in India and joined the Muslim exodus during the 1947 partition that created Pakistan, a seminal event that shaped the profound hatred of India among Pakistani militants. Mir was born in Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital and second-largest city, but grew up in Karachi. He has two brothers and two sisters, according to the Indian report.

Mir spent time in Saudi Arabia during his youth because his father worked there. Mir became steeped in Saudi fundamentalist ideology and developed a fierce anti-Semitic streak. His family may have run a manufacturing business in Lahore, according to Australian court testimony.

Mir was a teenager when a professor named Hafiz Saeed created Lashkar-i-Taiba (the Army of the Pure) in the late 1980s with Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian Islamist. Azzam had another claim to fame: He was an ideological mentor of Osama Bin Laden and helped him found the organization that was the forerunner of al-Qaeda.

Lashkar joined the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan supported by the United States and Pakistan. Soon, Pakistani strategists built Lashkar into a proxy army against India in the disputed territory of Kashmir. Lashkar boomed, thanks to the funds and guidance of the Pakistani state and Saudi benefactors. The group won vast support with its mix of extremism and nationalism and its array of schools, hospitals and social programs, especially in the Punjab, Mir’s home region. Indians called Lashkar “the government mujaheddin.”

Mir joined Lashkar when he was about 16, investigators say. Some senior U.S., British and French anti-terrorism officials say he also spent time in the military, although that remains unclear. For years, it was common for the Pakistani military to detail officers to Lashkar, according to investigators and court testimony. The ISI is part of the armed forces.

Mir rose rapidly in Lashkar, becoming chief of its unit in Lahore and then joining the international wing, which embraced global jihad in the 1990s. Lashkar militants fought in wars in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya and built far-flung recruitment and financing networks. Those activities and Lashkar’s anti-American and anti-Jewish propaganda showed an increasingly internationalist bent, according to U.S. congressional testimony and Pakistani and Western officials.

Yet the U.S. intelligence community still viewed the group as a regional player focused on India and Kashmir. Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.), the former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, said he tried and failed to get Lashkar designated as a terrorist organization in the late 1990s.

“I said it had a huge potential for damage,” Ackerman recalled. “People were not paying attention.”

Lashkar trained tens of thousands of holy warriors. It was easier to join than al-Qaeda, operating openly from storefront offices across Pakistan and attracting Westerners with slick propaganda in English. Some foreign Lashkar trainees went on to join al-Qaeda; several led al-Qaeda plots against New York and London.

Mir became a deputy to the director of Lashkar’s foreign operations wing. He had direct access to Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Lashkar’s military chief, and ties to al-Qaeda in neighboring Afghanistan, according to a French investigation. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Mir began grooming foreign volunteers who had come to Pakistan to wage war on the West.

Willie Brigitte became one of Mir’s favorites. Born in Guadeloupe and radicalized in Paris, the Afro-Caribbean convert was dour, burly and nearsighted behind round-rimmed glasses. Fellow trainees called him “the Grouchy Frenchman.”

Brigitte was part of an al-Qaeda-connected group of militants in Europe involved in numerous plots. In September 2001, he set off for Pakistan hoping to reach the Afghan battleground. He made his way to Lashkar headquarters in Muridke outside Lahore. The complex featured a mosque, a university, dormitories and houses for leaders. Brigitte briefly studied Arabic and the Koran and met Mir, the coordinator of foreign recruits, who carried himself like a rising star.

“He was in fact an important personage,” Brigitte testified later in France. “He was a man of about 30, very cordial and pleasant, with whom I had a good relationship.”

Of medium build, Mir had a dark complexion, black hair and a thick beard. He spoke English, Urdu, Hindi and Arabic. His nicknames were Abu Bara (Father of Bara), Uncle Bill, Sajid Bill, Wassi and Ibrahim. A Makarov pistol on his hip, he was accompanied by two bodyguards and a driver, according to Brigitte’s testimony. Mir was secretive, meticulous and adept with computers, according to the accounts of several recruits who have been captured. He was also charming, manipulative and ruthless.

His recruits included four militants from the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. They were part of a multiethnic crew of college graduates, U.S. Army veterans and gun enthusiasts whose spiritual leader was Ali Al-Timimi, an Iraqi-American imam based in Falls Church.

Galvanized by the Sept. 11 attacks, the men quit their jobs and traveled to Pakistan to train with Lashkar. Another Virginia militant who had already trained there called a Lashkar contact from the parking lot of a 7-Eleven to arrange the trip, according to federal court testimony of Yong-Ki Kwon, a Korean-American convert to Islam.

“It didn’t matter why the war was going to happen,” testified Kwon, a Virginia Tech graduate who had worked at Sprint. “The only thing that mattered is that our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan needs [sic] help against imminent attack.”

The Virginia jihadis joined up in Lahore at a Lashkar office decorated with posters depicting the U.S. Capitol in flames and the slogan: “Yesterday we saw Russia disintegrate, then India, next we see America and Israel burning.”

Mir soon cleared the volunteers to train for holy war.

The Camps

To reach Lashkar’s mountain training complex, recruits drove overnight past checkpoints manned by Pakistani soldiers, according to court testimony.

“They were deferential to us and let us pass without difficulty,” Brigitte said. “There was no search and no verification of our passports, which were in the hands of the Lashkar bosses.”

From a base camp, the recruits hiked to an altitude of 4,000 feet for nine days of firearms instruction, then climbed another 4,000 feet to a camp that taught covert warfare. The Pakistani army supplied crates of weapons with filed-off serial numbers, Brigitte testified.

The mountains teemed with more than 3,000 trainees. Although Pakistanis dominated the ranks, there were Americans, Arabs, Australians, Azeris, Britons, Chechens, Filipinos, Kurds, New Zealanders, Singaporeans, Turks and Uzbeks.

“It was very impressive every morning when we would gather and shout ‘Allah Ouallah Akbar,’ ” Brigitte testified. “The setting was imposing because you could see the outline of the Himalayas.”

The Frenchman bunked with the Virginia trainees in a mud hut. His zeal and endurance impressed his instructors, who led drills in English and Arabic. Over tea, Brigitte befriended several instructors, who told him they were Pakistani Army officers on special assignment.

“[They] did not hide their affiliation with the Pakistani Army,” Brigitte testified. “The close relations between the Pakistani Army and Lashkar were clear.”

Brigitte became convinced that Mir was also in the Pakistani military. During Mir’s visits to check on training progress, everyone from the camp chief to army sentries treated him like a superior, Brigitte said. It was clear to him that Mir was a military officer, he said.

“He never told me formally, but I understood it because of many details,” Brigitte testified. “He was very respected by the instructors who were themselves members of the Pakistani Army but also at the checkpoints where he was well-known. . . . Nonetheless, I never knew what unit Sajid belonged to or what his rank was.”

Several U.S. and French anti-terror officials say Mir became an army major, although he may not have reached that rank in 2001. He eventually left the military, although it is not clear when or why, officials say. Bruguière, the French judge, said the case showed “that Sajid Mir was a high-ranking officer in the Pakistani Army and apparently also was in the ISI.”

In contrast, some investigators aren’t convinced that Mir served in the military. Headley’s confession to Indian investigators doesn’t mention Mir’s military affiliation, though it portrays him as a close associate of the ISI.

The crucial role that Pakistani security forces played in the camps has emerged in other cases. A Briton who trained with Lashkar and was later convicted as the ringleader of a foiled 2004 plot against London by al-Qaeda testified that ISI officers screened and trained foreign recruits in Lashkar camps in 2000. When he returned to the stand for the next day of testimony, the Briton refused to answer further questions, alleging that the ISI had reacted to his courtroom account by threatening his relatives in Pakistan.

While Mir’s men drilled in the mountains in late 2001, a U.S-led military operation toppled the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The CIA took an interest in the Lashkar training camps in Pakistan as well, asking Pakistani intelligence to help find foreign militants who might pose a threat to the West, according to court testimony.

But the American hunt for terrorists in the Lashkar stronghold was doomed to fail because of the duplicity of the Pakistani security forces, according to testimony. On four occasions, instructors temporarily evacuated foreign trainees from the camps before joint U.S.-Pakistani intelligence teams arrived, Brigitte testified.

“The instructors were informed by the Pakistani army because they were part of the army,” Brigitte testified. “The foreign volunteers … were asked to clean the camp and especially retrieve cartridges and casings. From the comments of the Pakistanis who stayed, about 15 Pakistanis conducted these inspections with an equal number of Americans. … We were told they were CIA officers who were searching for the presence of foreign jihadis.”

The trainees trekked back down from a hiding place after the CIA teams left, Brigitte and Kwon testified.

Talent-Spotting

In November 2001, Mir gave the trainees disappointing news: Their dreams of martyrdom had been crushed.

Mir said Lashkar would not send them to fight in Afghanistan, because the U.S. military operation was almost over and had closed the border to aspiring foreign fighters, according to the testimony of Kwon and Brigitte.

Mir approached a handful of militants about operations in the West. First, he invited two of the Virginia militants – Kwon and Masoud Khan, a tough Pakistani-American – to dinner in Lahore.

At the restaurant, Mir introduced them to a Lashkar chief who wore “tight Western clothes” and a “nice trim beard,” Kwon testified. The chief jokingly called himself “the Disco Mujahid.” He asked them to undertake missions in the United States entailing “a lot of propaganda, information-gathering and e-mailing,” said Kwon, who declined the proposal.

Khan later told FBI agents that the Lashkar bosses asked him to conduct surveillance of an unnamed chemical plant in Maryland. The request is significant because it shows that Lashkar was gathering intelligence on U.S. targets as early as 2001, a period when American agencies saw Lashkar as a limited regional threat.

About two months later, Mir told Brigitte to return to France as the group’s “sector chief” there. Mir ordered him to keep quiet if arrested.

“He absolutely did not want it known that I had trained at a Lashkar camp,” Brigitte testified.

The handling of Brigitte – veiled threats, secretive communications – would later intensify the suspicions of French investigators that Mir had ties to Pakistani intelligence. Their indictment described Mir as Brigitte’s “case officer.”

“Brigitte was told: Go back and wait,” said a former top French intelligence official. “That’s what intelligence services do. Brigitte was a clandestine operative. . . . He obeyed orders. But I don’t think he realized that he had become an agent of an intelligence service.”

Around the time Brigitte left, a Pakistani-American arrived. His name at the time was Daood Gilani, but he would become known to the world as David Coleman Headley.

Headley, now 50, differed from Mir’s other protégés. He was older, a ladies’ man, a globe-trotter at ease among American and Pakistani elites. Born in Washington, D.C. to a prominent Pakistani broadcaster and a Philadelphia socialite, he moved to Pakistan as an infant and grew up in a conservative, devout household, attending a top military school.

Returning to the United States at 17 with his mother, he lived in Philadelphia and then New York and slid into a wild lifestyle of heroin dealing and addiction. In 1988, the DEA busted him at the Frankfurt Airport trying to smuggle drugs from Pakistan to the United States. According to court documents he promptly betrayed his accomplices, cooperated with investigators and won a reduced sentence.

After a bust in New York in 1997, Headley became a prized informant of the Drug Enforcement Administration. At the same time, he radicalized after years of a casual attitude toward Islam, according to associates. While spying on drug traffickers in Pakistan and participating in undercover DEA stings in New York, he began raising funds and recruiting for Lashkar. During a visit to his father’s home in Lahore in 2000, he became friends with Saeed, the Lashkar spiritual chief who draws tens of thousands to his rallies, and embraced the group’s ideology.

Headley juggled women as well as allegiances. He entered into an arranged marriage with a Pakistani in 1999 and now has four children with her. But he continued a longtime relationship in New York with a blonde make-up artist whom he married in 2002, according to court documents and interviews.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. authorities decided Headley’s unique profile would help them respond to a dire need for intelligence from South Asia. Prosecutors and DEA agents went to a federal judge and won an unusual decision ending Headley’s probation three years early, according to court documents and anti-terror officials. Weeks after the December 2001 ruling, Headley headed for Pakistan. U.S. officials say he was still a DEA informant when he began training in the Lashkar camps in early 2002 and may have remained an informant until 2005 or later.

Although the Pakistani instructors in the camps decided Headley was too old and too slow for combat in Kashmir, the charming American hit it off with Mir, the coordinator of foreign recruits. The two bonded because they both had smooth, aggressive con-man personalities, investigators say. Mir decided to cultivate this man of many worlds as a clandestine operative, according to documents and officials.

Unleashing the Network

In December 2001, Lashkar took part in a commando-style attack on the Indian Parliament that killed a dozen people and left India and Pakistan on the brink of war.

Washington finally designated Lashkar as a terrorist group. Pakistani authorities outlawed the group and briefly held Saeed, its spiritual leader, under house arrest. But in reality, investigators say, nothing much changed.

“Lashkar was the only major jihadi outfit to escape the Pakistani crackdown,” wrote Stephen Tankel, author of the forthcoming book “Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-E-Taiba,” in a recent academic report. “Lashkar served as a major provider of military training for jihadi actors in the region.”

In early 2002, Mir led an overseas buying spree for military equipment. He sent his British quartermaster, Abu Khalid, on four trans-Atlantic trips. Abu Khalid reported to Mir via e-mail as he worked with three of the Virginia militants, including Khan. They helped the Briton buy an unmanned airborne vehicle and more paintballs than the U.S. Marine Corps needs for a year of drills.

The procurement missions ended when the FBI arrested 11 Virginia militants in mid-2003. A search of Khan’s home turned up guns, a terrorist manual and photos of the White House and FBI headquarters. Investigators suspected he did reconnaissance on those sites as well as on the chemical plant in Maryland he had discussed with Mir.

Because the Virginia crew had played paintball war games as they radicalized, a somewhat skeptical news media dubbed them “The Paintball Jihadis.” Lawyers and Muslim activists complained about over-zealous prosecution.

Nonetheless, the defendants were sentenced to long prison terms. At the trial, Mir’s role in Lashkar surfaced publicly for the first time. But the group still wasn’t of much interest to the public or law enforcement, anti-terrorism officials say.

The trial revealed evidence of Lashkar’s dangerous alliance with al-Qaeda. Prosecutors cited a 2002 incident when U.S. and Pakistani forces captured a key al-Qaeda coordinator in a shootout at a Lashkar safe house in Faisalabad.

He had the phone number for Lashkar’s chief of international operations – Mir’s boss.

The Australian Plot

As the FBI closed in on the Virginia contingent, Mir launched a plot on the other side of the world.

In calls and e-mails in 2002 and 2003, he prepared Brigitte, the “Grouchy Frenchman,” for a trip to Australia. Mir directed British operatives to send $5,000 to Brigitte, asking his quartermaster in an e-mail: “How is our French Connection Project going?”

Brigitte arrived in Australia in May 2003 and joined forces with Faheem Lodhi, a Pakistani-born architect and militant who had worked for Mir in the camps. With Lodhi’s help, Brigitte settled into a new life in Sydney, quickly marrying a former Australian army intelligence officer who had converted to Islam.

At Mir’s direction, Brigitte collected maps and other intelligence including photos of military installations taken by his new wife, though she resisted his demands for information on potential targets. The wary Brigitte used the tradecraft learned in the Lashkar camps, taking measures to detect surveillance and burning documents, according to his wife’s testimony.

Lodhi created an alias and a fictitious business to obtain bomb chemicals and maps of the electrical grid. He compiled a 15-page manual for making homemade poisons, explosives and detonators. Investigators believe the duo planned to bomb a military base or a nuclear plant.

The plot was foiled by French agents, who were hunting Brigitte as part of a larger investigation. They learned he was in Sydney and alerted Australian intelligence. Police deported him to France in October and captured Lodhi after watching him throw satellite photos of military bases in a dumpster and call Mir from a phone booth.

Mir sent Lodhi an e-mail asking for “fresh news about our friend,” according to court documents.

“Our friend has returned to his country and his government has him,” the Australian operative responded gloomily.

Lodhi was sentenced to 20 years for preparing a terrorist act. Investigators think the plot was related to Australia’s troop presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The judge’s verdict noted Mir’s key role and called him a “shadowy figure” who deployed operatives for “terrorist actions in Australia.” U.S. and French investigators believe Mir must have had approval of Lashkar leaders for such a bold strike on the West.

Brigitte’s deportation put Mir in the sights of Bruguière, France’s best-known terrorist hunter. Questioned by Bruguière in November 2003, Brigitte discussed Mir in a tone of respect and fear. His account made French investigators suspect that Pakistani spies had played a role in the Australian plot.

“In the heart of Lashkar there are camps that train individuals for the mission of eliminating those who talk,” Brigitte testified. “And you understand that the Pakistani army and Pakistani intelligence were stakeholders in these operations.”

Bruguière took advantage of French laws allowing him to pursue terrorist conspiracies across borders. He worked with investigators in Virginia, Australia and Britain. Mir’s name, he said, popped up everywhere.

Preparing the Masterpiece

Mir did not just direct overseas operations from the safety of Pakistan.

His front-line duties took him to countries including Canada, Qatar, Syria and Thailand, where he tried to set up a Lashkar base, according to the Indian interrogation report. He used several passports with different identities, including a Christian one. He was arrested briefly during a mission in Dubai, but his Lashkar connections helped him get out of jail, according to the report, which does not specify the date or the reason for the arrest.

In 2005, Mir shifted to a Lashkar unit dedicated to attacks in India, and in April he embarked on a secret mission. He crossed the border into India at the Wagah border crossing, the only land port of entry with Pakistan, blending in with Pakistani cricket fans flocking to see their national team play in India, according to U.S. and Indian anti-terrorism officials.

Indian investigators think Mir was part of an operation involving a dozen Pakistani “cricket fans” who went missing after crossing the border. Indian spy-hunters eventually caught one: a suspected ISI agent with a false identity whom they accused of espionage.

Mir’s undercover mission involved terrorist reconnaissance on the National Defense College in New Delhi. A fellow Lashkar militant and former army major who accompanied Mir recalled that “he was very nervous” at the Indian border crossing, according to the Indian interrogation report.

Later that year, Mir’s experience in international operations and his skills as a handler of Western recruits paid off. Lashkar chose him to develop its most ambitious plot to date, a strike on Mumbai, India’s economic and cultural capital. Mir turned to Headley, his prize American recruit.

Headley was eager to put his talents to use. He had studied ideology, weapons, hand-to-hand-combat and survival skills during five extended stints in the Lashkar camps. He had become friendly with Lashkar bosses, some of whom were his neighbors in Lahore. Mir, his friend and protector, lived near the airport and a golf club in that city, according to Headley’s interrogation.

During a trip to New York in August 2005, Headley survived a close call with his wife there. New York police arrested him for assault after he allegedly slapped her in a domestic dispute, according to investigators and an investigative document. The wife reported his activities with Lashkar to a federal terrorism task force, describing in three interviews his radicalization, his training in the Pakistani camps and his claims that he was working as a U.S informant. Nonetheless, the FBI decided Headley did not pose a threat and closed the inquiry. His travels around the world continued, unimpeded.

Soon afterward, Headley met in Pakistan with Mir and other Lashkar bosses. They told him he had been chosen to do reconnaissance for a big job in Mumbai. He went to Philadelphia in November and legally changed his name from Daood Gilani to David Coleman Headley to conceal his Pakistani heritage. He also arranged to use the consulting firm of a Pakistani friend in Chicago, First World Immigration Services, as a cover for his terrorist reconnaissance.

“The change of name, establishment of an immigration office in India …use of an American passport and so on were my ideas,” Headley later told interrogators. “Lashkar appreciated these ideas.”

Enter the ISI

Headley had learned by now that Lashkar had an almost symbiotic relationship with the ISI, according to his confession.

The spy agency has “control over the most important operatives” of Lashkar, and every chief “is handled by some ISI official,” he told investigators, according to the Indian report. An ISI brigadier general served as handler for Zaki-ur-Rehmane Lakhvi, Lashkar’s military chief, who also “is close to the [Director General] of ISI,” he said. The ISI funded Lashkar and shielded Saeed, the spiritual leader, from interference, Headley said.

Saeed “is very close to ISI,” Headley said. “He is well protected.”

Headley’s confession confirms the assessment of foreign intelligence agencies, according to officials and experts: In exchange for ISI funding and direction, Lashkar has steadfastly avoided attacking the Pakistani state.

Pakistani officials deny such allegations. But U.S. and Indian investigators say Headley was more than a terrorist: He became a Pakistani spy.

“I don’t know of any other cases in which ISI has used and worked with Americans,” said Faddis, the former CIA counter-terror chief. “Having a guy like this would be great for LeT and ISI. The Indians are working off a profile of what they think enemy operatives look like. This guy does not fit that profile. He can walk through the screen without being seen.”

Headley’s relationship with the ISI began in January 2006 after Pakistani authorities briefly detained him for trying to smuggle arms into India. An ISI officer named Major Samir Ali interviewed the American, then referred him to a Major Iqbal, who became his main handler in Lahore, according to Headley’s account.

Major Iqbal, described as a fat, deep-voiced cigarette-smoker in his mid-thirties, brought Headley to a meeting with a man identified as Lieutenant Colonel Shah. The two officers promised Headley financial support for terrorist operations against India, according to the interrogation report.

At subsequent meetings in safe houses, Major Iqbal gave Headley secret documents on India. He assigned a noncommissioned officer to give the American standard intelligence training. Headley learned techniques for detecting surveillance, developing sources and other skills, then practiced with the lower-ranking officer on the streets of Lahore. The specialized training lasted several months and continued intermittently as Major Iqbal taught Headley how to use cameras and other devices for missions, the report says.

“I became close to Major Iqbal,” Headley said. “The training given by this NCO under the guidance of Major Iqbal was much more scientific and effective than the trainings I did in the LeT camps.”

Phone and e-mail evidence have corroborated Headley’s contact with Major Iqbal and other suspected ISI officers, U.S. and Indian officials say. Major Iqbal has been detected directing intelligence and terror operations in other cases, officials say.

Because Lashkar keeps the spy agency informed about its foreign militants, Headley’s arrest near the Pakistani border may have been part of a plan to recruit a promising American operative, an Indian counter-terror official said.

Pakistani officials say they haven’t been able to identify Major Iqbal. They deny that any serving military officers were involved in the plot.

“It’s possible people impersonate the ISI or the army,” the Pakistani official said. “Uniforms have been stolen in the past for this kind of thing.”

In the summer of 2006, according to U.S. court documents and investigators, Major Iqbal gave Headley $25,000 to pay for expenses and to establish his cover, a new office of the U.S. immigration consulting firm in the city that was his target: Mumbai.

Reconnaissance

Headley seemed like a gregarious, high-rolling American businessman when he set up shop in Mumbai in September 2006.

He hired a secretary and opened an office of First World Immigration Services, which brought hundreds of clients to the United States. He partied at swank locales such as the ornate Taj Mahal Hotel, a 1903 landmark favored by Westerners and the Indian elite. He joined an upscale gym, where he befriended a Bollywood actor. He roamed the booming, squalid city taking photos and shooting video.

But it was all a front. Headley was busy gathering intelligence, taking photos and shooting video of potential terrorist targets. When he returned to Pakistan, he reported to Major Iqbal in Lahore and Mir in Muzaffarabad, according to court documents.

Mir and Major Iqbal were both keenly interested in the iconic Taj, the centerpiece of the plan, according to U.S. and Indian court documents. Mir told Headley he needed more images and also schedules for the hotel’s conference rooms and ballroom, which often hosted high-powered events, according to investigators and court documents.

“They thought it would be a good place to get valuable hostages,” the Indian anti-terrorism official said.

Headley did more reconnaissance missions over the next two years, reporting to Mir and Major Iqbal before and after each trip. His Lashkar and ISI handlers met him separately, but they coordinated with each other, according to court documents and investigators.

In addition, Major Iqbal sent Headley on separate spying missions to scout an atomic research center and military sites around India. The ISI officer called Headley from a phone number with a 646 area code (one used in the New York area). This could have been a technique to conceal the origin of the calls in Pakistan and avoid eavesdropping by American and Indian intelligence agencies.

“The whole thing feels like ISI is trying to maintain plausible deniability,” said Faddis, using the intelligence term for operating through an intermediary who can be disavowed. “They are running in parallel with LeT and clearly leveraging sources for their own purposes, but they are still trying to avoid being directly tied to the attack planning, most of the time.”

Mir Convicted in Paris

As Mir plotted in 2006, French investigators were confronting the dimensions of the threat he posed.

Bruguière, the French judge, had spent three years investigating Mir as the result of Brigitte’s confession in the foiled bomb plot in Australia. The French terrorist had identified Mir as his handler, describing him as a figure whose influential connections made him “untouchable in Pakistan.” Building on the investigations in Virginia, Britain and Australia, Bruguière assembled a case that Mir was a kingpin leading terrorist operations on four continents.

The evidence also convinced Bruguière that Mir was or had been an officer in the Pakistani army or the ISI. Senior European and U.S. counterterrorism officials concur with the French judge, but some U.S. investigators do not.

In October 2006, two years before the Mumbai attacks, Bruguière issued an arrest warrant for Mir that was circulated worldwide by Interpol. There was no response from Pakistan.

A Paris court convicted Mir in absentia and sentenced him to 10 years in prison in 2007. Once again, Pakistan did nothing. And Bruguière says most Western investigators he dealt with continued to view Lashkar as a regional actor confined to South Asia.

“For me it was a crucial case, a turning point,” Bruguière said, “because of what it revealed about the role played by Pakistani groups in the global jihad and about the role of the Pakistani security forces in terrorism. We had the impression that Mir was protected at the highest levels of the state.”

In summer 2007, Bruguière met at the White House with a top security adviser to President George W. Bush. The French judge shared his fears about Lashkar and his suspicion that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was playing a “double game.” (Musharraf has asserted publicly that he was a staunch ally in the fight against terrorism.)

Bruguière said the White House official, whom he declined to identify publicly, did not seem convinced.

“The U.S. government is a huge machine,” said Bruguière, who is now the European Union’s envoy to Washington in efforts against terrorism financing. “It’s difficult to make it change course.”

Dissent in the Ranks

Mir likely knew about the Interpol warrant and his conviction in France, but he did not seem worried.

In 2007 he and Major Iqbal sent Headley to assess several dozen targets in Mumbai and other Indian cities. Headley even befriended aides to a Hindu political strongman, a potential first step for an assassination plot, according to his confession.

Both Mir and Headley got married during this period, although Headley was still married to his Pakistani and New York wives, according to court documents. Mir wed the daughter of a former Pakistani navy chaplain. Headley’s new wife was a Moroccan medical student in Lahore.

Headley’s bride, Faiza Outalha, was a devout Muslim who covered her head with the traditional hijab. But she was also strong-willed. Soon after the wedding, she demanded that Headley take her with him on what she thought were his business trips to Mumbai. Headley did not want to blow his cover as a non-Muslim American, so he kept her at a distance from acquaintances and hotel staff and tried to avoid registering her at the Taj, according to his confession.

“It was very difficult to conceal her Muslim identity as she was wearing a hijab,” Headley told Indian interrogators. “Two persons had seen me with Faiza when I was with her in the lobby of the hotel….I managed to convince both of them by telling them that she was a client of mine.”

In September, Mir showed Headley a Styrofoam model of the Taj that was constructed using his photos, videos and reports. They talked about attacking a conference of software engineers at the hotel. The plan resembled previous Lashkar strikes in India: a bold but limited shooting attack on a single target by gunmen who escaped afterward.

But soon Mir began working on a more ambitious project involving multiple targets, including Western ones. The shift resulted from conflict in the ranks of Lashkar and the ISI, according to investigators and Headley’s account. Disillusioned militants who wanted a bigger role in fighting in Afghanistan and in the global jihad were defecting to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, because Lashkar and the ISI were keeping the main focus on Kashmir.

Lashkar’s leadership responded to this dangerous internal rift by deciding to carry out a spectacular al-Qaeda-style strike on Western targets in Mumbai. The ISI approved the shift in tactics, Headley explained.

“The ISI I believe had no ambiguity of understanding the necessity to strike India [and] …shifting and minimizing the theater of violence from the domestic soil of Pakistan,” he said.

The analysis rings true, according to officials and experts.

“Lashkar’s senior leaders are sometimes pulled between adherence to the ISI and their dedication to pan-Islamist jihad,” Tankel said. “Meanwhile, the ISI is trying to pressure the group enough to keep it in line and not so much that it fragments. That becomes more difficult as LeT integrates further with other outfits and a segment of its members agitate for breaking free of ISI control.”

Warning Signs

Headley’s tangled personal life soon caused trouble again. His quarrels with his new wife spurred her, like the wife in New York two years earlier, to report him to U.S. authorities.

During walk-in visits to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad in December 2007 and January 2008, Outalha told federal agents that she believed her husband was a terrorist. She mentioned militant training and suicide bombings and described his travels to Mumbai, including her stay at the Taj hotel, U.S. law enforcement officials say.

But U.S. agents at the embassy decided the woman’s account lacked specifics. Headley continued to roam free.

In early 2008, the FBI and CIA began hearing chatter about Mumbai as a Lashkar target. The intelligence may have come from communications intercepts or sources in Pakistan. But privately, some U.S and Indian anti-terrorism officials suspect that U.S. agencies were tracking Headley’s movements and communications and picking up bits and pieces about the plot-without realizing he was deeply involved.

U.S. intelligence officials alerted their Indian counterparts in early 2008 that they had general information about a Lashkar plot against Mumbai. Officials insist that they didn’t warn the Indians specifically about Headley because they didn’t know about his involvement. Although U.S. officials say Headley was no longer working as a DEA informant by early 2008, it isn’t clear when that relationship ended or whether it evolved into wider intelligence-gathering. The CIA and the FBI say Headley never worked for them.

Meanwhile, Pakistani security forces stepped up their support of the plot. In March 2008, Mir brought Headley to an important planning session in Muzaffarabad hosted by Lakhvi, Lashkar’s military chief. They were joined by Abu Qahafa, a training specialist, and Muzzammil Bhatt, one Lashkar’s most feared bosses. The guest of honor was a frogman in the Pakistani navy.

The crew-cut, clean-shaven frogman, identified as Abdur-Rehman, was in his mid-thirties. He spread a maritime chart on the table. For two days the plotters discussed options for sending an attack team to Mumbai by sea and using a hijacked Indian boat for the clandestine journey.

“They had discussed various landing options along the coast of Mumbai,” Headley recalled. “The frogman told them that the sea became rough after the month of June. … [He] told me to check the position of the naval vessels on the Indian side so as to avoid a gunfight.”

Soon afterward, Headley met with Major Iqbal in Lahore. The ISI officer already knew about the maritime strategy, Headley said. In that meeting and other conversations, he said, Major Iqbal offered tactical advice: escape routes for the gunmen, setting up a safe house, the hijacking at sea.

In April 2008, Headley’s Moroccan wife returned to the U.S. embassy in Islamabad with another, more specific tip. She warned that her husband was on “a special mission.” She also linked him to a 2007 train bombing in India that had killed 68 people and that India and the United States blamed on Lashkar at the time, U.S. officials say. Authorities haven’t implicated Headley in that still-unsolved attack, however. It is not known how the U.S. Embassy personnel responded to the wife’s allegations, but officials say the tip didn’t reach the FBI until after the Mumbai attacks.

Headley returned to Mumbai in April. He went on a series of boat tours, using a GPS device that Mir had given him to assess landing sites for the amphibious attack, U.S. court documents say.

In May, U.S. agencies alerted India that new intelligence suggested Lashkar was planning to attack the Taj and other sites frequented by foreigners and Americans, according to U.S. and Indian anti-terrorism officials. A map identifying the U.S. consulate and other targets in Mumbai was found when Indian authorities arrested an accused Lashkar scout.

Despite the pressure of planning his biggest project ever, Mir took time during this period for a rather odd personal enterprise. He underwent plastic surgery on his face, apparently for esthetic reasons rather than to disguise his appearance. Mir’s fellow militant chiefs made fun of him afterward, according to the report.

“In my assessment, his face has not changed much,” Headley told interrogators. “Zaki ridiculed Sajid by telling him that plastic surgery had widened [his] eyes.”

The Stronghold Option

Mir and the other Pakistani masterminds decided on a classic Lashkar “fedayeen raid” in which fighters inflict maximum chaos and casualties.

“Fedayeen” is an Arabic word for guerrilla fighters and means “one who sacrifices himself,” but the concept is not the same as a suicide attack. Mir and Major Iqbal still envisioned a scenario in which the attackers would escape in the confusion, according to investigators and documents.

Over the summer, Mir oversaw the work of Abu Qahafa, the veteran Lashkar trainer, who prepared 32 recruits during months of drills in mountain camps and at the group’s headquarters outside Lahore, according to investigators and court documents.

Fifteen candidates were sent to Karachi for swimming and nautical instruction. But the youthful country boys had little experience with water. Some got seasick. Some ran away from swim training. Trainers had to bring in eight replacements, Indian and U.S. anti-terrorism officials say.

In June, Mir discussed targets with Headley. For the first time, Mir said he wanted to attack the Chabad House, thereby singling out Jews, Israel and-because the rabbi was American-the United States.

“I was very impressed to know that Chabad House had been put as a target,” Headley told interrogators. “Sajid, as I understand is a ‘Saudi Salafi.’ They consider the Jewish people as the number one target.”

Headley then met with Major Iqbal, who “was very happy to know that Chabad House had been chosen,” according to the interrogation report.

Headley’s final reconnaissance trip lasted the month of July. When he returned, the planning gathered steam. The leaders of Lashkar held a special meeting to discuss the plot. Mir had Headley wait nearby, coming out of the meeting to consult with him about details.

The chiefs decided the attack would be too complex for the fighters to escape. Instead, they would barricade themselves and fight to the death. The planners called this “the stronghold option.”

In September, the anti-terrorism chief of the Mumbai police visited the Taj Hotel to discuss new warnings from U.S. intelligence about a Lashkar plot. Hotel management beefed up security, Indian officials say.

At about the same time, Headley’s Moroccan wife complained about her husband to “senior police officials” in Lahore. Headley said Pakistani police jailed him for eight days, but his account doesn’t specify the charges. His Pakistani father-in-law put up bail and the ISI intervened as well, the interrogation report says.

“Major Iqbal also helped me [in] this case,” Headley said.

A Pakistani official denied the story. He blamed U.S. officials for failing to tell Pakistan about the intelligence the United States had shared with India in 2008.

“Perhaps with Pakistan alerted, the plots could have been avoided,” the Pakistani official said.

The Strike

Lashkar’s first two attempts to attack Mumbai failed.

The plotters had isolated the 10-man attack team in a safe house in Karachi and outlined their mission, using videos, photos and maps. But the first boat the ISI gave them hit a rock and sank soon after departing in September. A second attempt foundered when an Indian vessel escaped the attempted hijacking at sea, according to investigators and the Indian report.

In November, Headley went to Karachi to meet with Mir, who updated him on the status of the operation. Headley had no contact with the attack team, though Mir showed him photos of the youthful gunmen, according to documents and officials.

On November 18, American officials told Indian intelligence that a suspicious ship might be en route to Mumbai. The Indians requested more information, the Indian anti-terrorism official said.

At 8 a.m. on Nov. 22 the attack squad finally left Karachi, accompanied by Mir and several other chiefs. At sea, the group hijacked an Indian fishing trawler and murdered the crew. Mir later said he had killed two Indian sailors himself.

The attack squad set sail for Mumbai in the fishing trawler. On the evening of Nov. 26, they reached a point about five miles offshore and transferred to an 11-seat dinghy. They landed in Cuffe Parade, a slum scouted by Headley where lights, phones and police were scarce.

The bosses had returned to their remote command post in the safe house in Karachi. The room was stocked with computers, televisions, voice-over-Internet phones purchased from a New Jersey company and satellite phones manned by Mir and five other handlers, according to U.S. officials and an Indian intelligence report.

The assault on Mumbai began about 9:30 p.m. Two-man teams hit four of the targets within a half-hour. Assault rifles chattered; time bombs exploded in taxis and at strategically chosen sites; panic engulfed the city. Despite the repeated U.S. warnings, Indian security forces were caught off-guard. Elite National Security Guard commandos didn’t fly in from Delhi until the next morning.

At the Karachi command post, Mir took a moment to send a telephone text message to Headley at home in Lahore. The message told Headley to turn on his TV.

Voices in the Night

As the bloodshed intensified, Indian intelligence officers frantically checked known phone numbers associated with Lashkar. They were able to intercept and record nearly 300 calls. Mir’s voice dominated the conversations, according to officials and documents. Thanks to Headley, he knew the targets inside-out.

The phone handlers in Karachi made the attack interactive, relaying reports about TV coverage to the gunmen and even searching the Internet for the name of a banker they had taken hostage. After killing 10 people at the historic Leopold Cafe, a second assault team joined the two gunmen at the Taj. Using the alias Wassi, Mir oversaw the assault on the Taj Hotel, the prime target, where 32 people died.

“They wanted to see the Taj Mahal burn,” a senior U.S. law enforcement official said. “It was all choreographed with the media in mind.”

Mir chided a gunman who grew distracted by the luxuries of a suite instead of setting the hotel ablaze, according to one intercepted call.

“We can’t watch if there aren’t any flames,” said Mir, who was viewing the action on live television. “Where are they?”

“It’s amazing,” the gunman exclaimed. “The windows are huge. It’s got two kitchens, a bath and a little shop.”

“Start the fire, my brother,” Mir insisted. “Start a proper fire, that’s the important thing.”

At the nearby Oberoi Hotel, two attackers hunted Americans and Britons, demanding passports at gunpoint, according to U.S. investigators. They stormed the restaurant and shot Sandeep “Sam” Jeswani, 43, an Indian-American customer-relations director for a radiation therapy company in Wisconsin. At another table, they executed Alan Scherr, 58, and his daughter Naomi, 13. The former art professor from Virginia had taken his daughter on a spiritual pilgrimage to India.

The gunmen killed 33 people at the Oberoi, then took refuge in Room 1856. Their handlers instructed them to divide ammunition magazines and keep their weapons on burst mode to conserve bullets. After one gunman was killed, Mir encouraged the other to go out in a blaze of glory.

“For your mission to end successfully, you must be killed,” Mir said in one of the intercepted calls. “God is waiting for you in heaven. . . . Fight bravely, and put your phone in your pocket, but leave it on. We like to know what’s going on.”

Another team rampaged through Mumbai’s central train station, killing 58 and wounding 104. Their tactics reflected Lashkar’s expert training. They avoided running, which is tiring and churns up emotions. They stayed within arm’s length in a “buddy pair” combat formation, a Lashkar signature technique that enabled them to support one another psychologically, sustain fire and exchange ammunition.

Unlike the others, however, the duo at the train station failed to call the command post. Instead of barricading themselves with hostages as ordered, they left the station. It was a dramatic error that underscored the crucial role of the handlers’ round-the-clock phone instructions, their ingenious method of compensating for the limitations of their fighters.

“The Mumbai attackers were well-trained, but they were not that highly skilled,” said Lt. Kevin Yorke of the intelligence division of the New York Police Department, who did a tactical study of the attacks.

In the running gunfights that followed, the chief of Mumbai’s anti-terrorist unit was killed along with an attacker. The other gunman, a diminutive 21-year-old with a fourth-grade education, was captured. The confession of that lone surviving attacker proved vital to the investigation.

Death Calls at Chabad House

The six-story Jewish center known as the Chabad House was attacked about an hour after the assault began.

Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, the red-bearded, 29-year-old director, and his pregnant wife, Rivka, 28, had entertained visitors in the second-floor dining room that night. Two rabbis from New York, Aryeh Leibish Teitelbaum and Ben-Zion Chroman, had stopped in to say goodbye as they wrapped up a trip to India to certify kosher food products.

When Holtzberg heard shots and screams, he grabbed his cellphone and called a security officer at the Israeli consulate.

“The situation is bad,” he said.

Then the line went dead.

The gunmen shot the Holtzbergs and the visiting rabbis. The Holtzbergs’ son, 2-year-old Moishele, wandered among corpses and debris until the next day, when his Indian nanny crept upstairs, grabbed him and escaped.

News that one of his men had been captured reached Mir in the command post. Mir decided to try to win the attacker’s release by using the two female hostages who were still alive at Chabad House: Yocheved Orpaz, the Israeli grandmother, and Norma Rabinovich, the Mexican tourist.

Mir told a gunman to hand Rabinovich the phone. He ordered her to propose a prisoner exchange to Israeli diplomats. She reported back to him after her conversation with the Israelis, addressing him as “sir.”

“I was talking to the consulate a few minutes ago,” she said, her voice shaking. “They are calling the prime minister and the army in India from the embassy in Delhi.”

Mir’s serene tone made him sound like a helpful bureaucrat.

“Don’t worry then, ah, just sit back and relax and don’t worry and just wait for them to make contact,” he told her.

Hours later, Mir gave the order to kill her. A gunman named Akasha sounded reluctant. Mir turned icy when he learned the two women were still alive. He demanded: “Have you done the job or not?”

Akasha executed the women as Mir listened, according to the transcript. The gunfire echoed over the phone.

The next morning, helicopter-borne commandos swooped onto the roof. Mir gave real-time orders as he watched the gunfight on television. Akasha reported in a hoarse, strangled voice that he had been wounded in the arm and leg.

“God protect you,” Mir said. “Did you manage to hit any of their guys?”

“We got one commando. Pray that God will accept my martyrdom.”

“Praise God. Praise God. God keep you.”

Story continues here.

Latest News
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: