The involvement of the D-Company in the Mumbai attacks has come out in a report on LeT released by the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College, the Department of Defence, which says that the D-Company is now closely tied with LeT activities in India.
According to the report, Dawood Ibrahim is believed to have resided in Pakistan since 1993 and now owns malls, luxury homes, and shipping and trucking lines that smuggle arms and heroin into India.
In exchange for his refuge in Pakistan, the report said a percentage of D-Company’s profits were diverted to ISI-supported Islamic militant groups such as LeT.
“Evidence demonstrates that these links were formed in late 1993 or early 1994. Photographs of Tiger Memon posing with leaders of the Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Front (JKIF) at an ISI safe house in Muzaffarabad surfaced and served as the first proof of the involvement of mafia money in Kashmir,” the report said.
The report authored by Ryan Clarke says the D-Company has now extended its base to Saudi Arabia too.
“LeT, which is estimated to be responsible for 60 per cent of terrorist killings in India, has been able to establish cells in several parts of the world as a result of assistance received from elements within ISI and Dawood’s network within India and in the Gulf,” the report said.
“There have been arrests of LeT operatives all over the world, including seven arrests by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during the then Pakistan President Musharraf’s June 2003 visit to the United States.
Even though the information was repressed in order to avoid embarrassing Musharraf, the operatives from Washington and Philadelphia were eventually charged with “stockpiling weapons and conspiring to wage jihad against India in support of terrorists in Kashmir,” it said.
Further, US authorities claim that there are still two wanted suspects related to these arrests that are residing in Saudi Arabia.
“D-Company has shifted some of its assets to Saudi Arabia fearing a crackdown from UAE authorities, and if LeT operatives are indeed hiding in the Sunni kingdom they are possibly doing so with Ibrahim’s knowledge and assistance. Saudi money is also a primary financer of LeT’s activities in Pakistan and Kashmir,” it said.
The report points to Tanvir Ahmad Ansari, a practitioner of Unani medicine and LeT operative suspected of involvement in the 7/11 Bombay serial bombings, was tasked with strengthening relations between LeT and D-Company.
The motivations for this cultivation were both tactical and strategic as LeT’s partner in the Islamic Front for Jihad, al-Qaeda, expressed a desire to expand its operations in East Africa and were willing to offer cash for D-Company’s networks.
