From the April 2009 Idaho Observer:

Shades of 9/11: India, U.S. implicated in Mumbai attacks

In a recent update, the American Free Press reported April 17, 2009, that the suspected Pakistani gunman on trial in India for last year’s Mumbai attacks will plead not guilty and has accused police of extracting a confession through torture.

The development came as the prosecution opened its case against Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, calling the November 26, 2008 carnage in the city a product of "institutionalized terrorism" in Pakistan.

Kasab faces a string of charges, including "waging war" on India, murdering 166 people, attempted murder and kidnapping. He faces the death penalty if convicted.

Factions within the India government are calling for Pakistan to be listed as a "terrorist nation," Jawed Naqvi reported for Dawn.com Feb. 7, 2009. Other factions within the government appear resistant to such a listing.

India’s Defence Minister A.K. Antony and Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee warned that unbridled violence threatened the very survival of Pakistan and wider stability in the region; that the onus was equally on the international community to act, a comment that sounded like advice for a stepped up military campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan; and that all options were open, asserting that terrorism would be fought with "courage and fortitude," wrote Naqvi.

Naqvi also reported Feb. 9 that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Singh Modi hinted at an internal hand in the terror strikes. "If we single out that one incident (of Mumbai attacks) and ask any person in this country, even with basic information and knowledge they will say that such a big terror attack on India cannot take place without any internal help from the nation itself," he said.

Modi’s comments came three weeks after he attacked the Congress party-led coalition government for asking Pakistan to accept the statement of Kasab, the "lone terrorist caught alive" for the Mumbai attacks, as proof of what happened.

But according to Associated Press reports, on November 28, 2008, Indian Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh claimed two British-born Pakistanis were among eight gunmen arrested by Indian authorities, reported the Belfast Telegraph, a UK-based newspaper.

UK authorities played down reports that the terrorists included Britons as violence in the city continued for a third day.

Meanwhile Minister Mukherjee was expected to hold discussions in Dhaka to raise the issue of terrorism allegedly emanating from Bangladesh.

Paul Joseph Watson of Prisonplanet.com reported last December that details strongly indicate that the terrorists were aided by some elements of the Indian security apparatus responsible for protecting the city.

It has now been confirmed that the Indian security services received numerous warnings that terrorists were planning to arrive by sea and attack the Taj Mahal hotel, but security was relaxed, allowing the terrorists to prolong the attack for days rather than hours. "[Many Indians] are incredulous at eyewitness reports of Indian police refusing to fire back at the terrorists as they carried on their rampage with AK47s," Watson said, "forcing citizens to go hand to hand with the armed assailants."

The plot thickens as Anita Uddaiya, who saw six of the terrorists involved in the attack arrive in the city, stated in January that she was taken to the U.S. and questioned by investigating agencies there.

The Times of India reported January 15, 2009, that Uddaiya had gone missing on a Sunday morning and was returned to Mumbai on Wednesday around 1:30 a.m. She said she had seen the terrorists land in a rubber dinghy on the beach at the colony. But when she asked them where they had come from, she was told to mind her own business.

Corriere della Sera reported Feb 24, 2009, that gunmen behind the Mumbai raids used cell phones that were activated in the U.S. and paid for with funds sent from Italy. The Italian daily said that Italian security forces were investigating a wire transfer sent to the U.S. from a northern Italian city and found the cell phones were activated in the U.S. by an American company and registered to an Indian citizen. At least three of these phones were used by the militants during the Mumbai siege, it said.

Watson also reported last December that General Hamid Gul, the former head of the Pakistani ISI, stated on CNN that both the Mumbai attacks and 9/11 were "inside jobs," much to the chagrin of host Fareed Zakaria, who is the editor of Newsweek magazine, a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) kingpin and a Trilateral Commission board member. Zakaria told his viewers, "Some of General Gul’s views are simply false. There is a mountain of evidence about 9/11 that refutes his assertions," but failed to cite any of it, wrote Watson.

Asked by Zakaria as to who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, Gul responded that the attacks were planned inside America by people with a dangerous agenda who have "turned the world upside-down."

"…I have been on record, and I said it is the Zionists or the neocons. They have done it. It was an inside job…[T]hey wanted to go on [as] the world conquerors. They were looking upon it as an opportunity window, when the Muslim world was lying prostrate. Russia was nowhere in sight. China was still not an economic giant that it has turned out to be. And they thought that this was a good time to go and fill those strategic areas, which are still lying without any American presence. And, of course, to control the energy tap of the world."

The India government claims that it has investigated it’s part of the Mumbai attacks and is accusing Pakistan of delaying an investigation into the role Pakistani nations may have played in the tragedy, Dawn.com reported April 15, 2009.

"If Pakistan government says that it can't investigate why don't they let the FBI to investigate who are willing to do it. If they can't investigate, allow us (India) to do the investigation," Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram told a news conference in Ahmedabad.

Washington and New Delhi have been maintaining that the Mumbai terror attack plan was hatched in Pakistan.