‘Pakistani navy trainer trained 26/11 terrorists’

NEW DELHI - A Pakistani navy trainer was involved in training the 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists who attacked Mumbai in November 2008, according to revelations by terror operative David Coleman Headley to his Indian interrogators, an official said here.

Headley’s interrogation inputs corroborate what Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving terrorist among the 10, told investigators during his quizzing, said the official.

“Kasab had confessed that they got training from the Pakistan Navy and were trained by a frogman in swimming and underwater diving,” the official told IANS.

“This was confirmed by Headley to the Indian investigators,” including to sleuths of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) who interrogated the Pakistani-American terrorist in a US prison last month.

Home Secretary G.K. Pillai last week told a national daily that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency had controlled and coordinated the Mumbai attack “from beginning to end” in a 60-hour-siege beginning Nov 26, 2008, that left 166 people dead.

Headley also revealed to Indian investigators that the Pakistani spy agency paid Rs.25 lakh to the LeT to purchase the boat used by the 10 terrorists to sail near the Indian maritime boundary from Karachi before hijacking an Indian fishing trawler ‘Kuber’ to sneak into the financial capital.