India charges Pakistani gunman in Mumbai attacks
The Associated Press, Mumbai, India | Thu, 02/26/2009 8:44 AM
Indian officials have charged a Pakistani national in connection with the deadly Mumbai attacks last year, a case that could result in an execution and heighten tensions between the nuclear-armed nations.
Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, was captured in the early hours of the attacks and jailed ever since. He was charged Wednesday with 12 criminal counts, including murder and waging war against India and could face the death penalty if convicted.
Nine other attackers were killed during the three-day siege in November, which left 164 people dead and targeted luxury hotels, a Jewish center and other sites across the city.
Special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said he expected the trial to begin in coming weeks and conclude within six months - unusually swift for India, where the legal process can drag on for decades. The trial in India's deadliest terror attack, the 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed 257 people, took 14 years to complete.
"I hope they hang Kasab," Divya Salaskar, the daughter of a police officer killed in the attacks, told the NDTV television station. She called for "a quick trial and a quick result."
The trial could futher inflame tensions with Pakistan as it lays out the role of Pakistani groups in the assault.
India blames the attack on Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamist militant group widely believed created by Pakistani intelligence agencies in the 1980s to fight Indian rule in the divided Kashmir region. The charges do not mention Pakistan's intelligence agency.
India says all 10 attackers were from Pakistan.
Earlier this month, Pakistani officials acknowledged that the Mumbai attacks were partly plotted on its soil and announced criminal proceedings against eight suspects.
The filing against Kasab - detailed in an 11,000-page document that took several men to carry - included his confession, accounts from more than 2,000 witnesses and closed circuit television footage that shows him and an accomplice walking into Mumbai's crowded Chhatrapati Shivaji train station and spraying it with bullets.
Indian law requires that charges be filed against a suspect within 90 days of arrest. Kasab was formally arrested November 28.
Kasab has received a copy of the police charge sheet, Nikam said Wednesday. Nikam said at least 35 other suspects in the attacks had "absconded" and authorities would continue investigating. He declined to list their names or nationalities.
On Wednesday, Indian police also filed charges against two Indian citizens suspected of aiding the attackers, Nikam said.
Prosecutors say one man, Faheem Ansari, had maps of the sites attacked in Mumbai, and police say the other, Sabauddin Ahmed, guided gunmen across India's porous borders. They were jailed last February after an attack on a police station in northern India.
Both men were in court when the charges were filed.
| 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|