D-Company in cahoots with LeT, Al Qaeda: US report

The “D-Company, a 5,000-member criminal syndicate operating mostly in Pakistan, India, and the United Arab Emirates provides an example of the criminal-terrorism ‘fusion’ model,” the Congressional Research Service (CRS) said in a report on the organisation run by the prime accused in the 1993 Mumbai bombings.

“The US government contends that the D-Company has found common cause with Al Qaeda and shares its smuggling routes with that terrorist group,” noted the report prepared by the research wing of the US Congress for lawmakers.

The United Nations has also added Dawood Ibrahim to its list of individuals associated with Al Qaeda, said the report on “International Terrorism and Transnational Crime: Security Threats, US Policy, and Considerations for Congress” released Tuesday.
“D-Company’s seeming transformation from a profit-motivated criminal syndicated to a fusion crime-terror organization also altered its composition. Many of the Hindu members left the group after the 1993 bombings, with some forming a competing gang,” the report said. “While the organization reportedly collaborates with LeT and Al Qaeda, the more secular orientation of D-Company’s leadership makes it unlikely that it will formally merge with those terrorist groups, analysts believe,” it said.
“Regardless, D-Company’s own terrorist endeavors, its deep pockets, and its reported cooperation with LeT and Al Qaeda, present a credible a threat to US interests in South Asia, security experts assess,” CRS said.

Lending his criminal expertise and networks to such terrorist groups, he is capable of smuggling terrorists across national borders, trafficking in weapons and drugs, controlling extortion and protection rackets, and laundering ill-gotten proceeds, including through the abuse of traditional value transfer methods, like hawala, it said.
D-Company’s evolution into a true criminal-terrorist group began in response to the destruction of the Babri mosque in Uttar Pradesh in December 1992, CRS said.