June 30, 2003	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 29,1424

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WASHINGTON, June 29: An FBI report claims that group of eight Lashkar-I-Taiba suspects travelled to Pakistan recently and received military training there.

A set of documents the agency released earlier this week while indicting a group of Lashkar suspects, claim that the suspects received training in small arms, machine guns and grenade launchers at a Lashkar camp in northeast Pakistan. Some of them even fought against Indian troops in occupied Kashmir.

Besides the eight indicted on Friday, the three others who have not yet been identified.

The disclosure that one of the arrested men is a Pakistani citizen working as an electrical engineer in the United States and holds a H1-B visa has also come as a shock to the Pakistani community.

Thousands of Pakistani professionals work in the United States and they fear that the alleged involvement of a Pakistani professional in these activities could create problems for them as well.

The charges against these suspects have also allowed the Indian lobby in Washington to launch a vicious attack on Pakistan, saying that Islamabad is still training extremists for jihad in Kashmir although publicly it denies any involvement with such groups.

According to the Indian lobby, US intelligence agencies have long believed that Pakistan has not severed its links to groups like Lashkar and is also allowing them to cross into occupied Kashmir for carrying out attacks on Indian forces.

The lobby hopes that the FBI action, the first against a Kashmiri group inside the United States, would lead to more such actions against the supporters of jihad in Kashmir, particularly against those who collect donations from Muslims for various Kashmiri groups.

To order a crackdown on the pro-Kashmir elements, the Bush administration used an almost forgotten and obscure law that forbids Americans or US residents from attacking friendly countries with which the United States is at peace, in this case India.

The Indian lobby interprets this as indicating major change in US policy saying that it amounts to the endorsement of the Indian policy that all armed activities in Kashmir must come to an end.

The Indians note that the indictment explicitly refers to terrorist activities directed against India in the name of jihad.

The Indian lobby points out that last week US authorities also arrested an Ohio truck driver of Kashmiri origin, Iyman Faris or Mohammed Rauf. His reported connection to Al Qaeda alarmed US intelligence agencies and forced them to act against other Kashmiri groups as well, the Indians say.

They interpret the action as indicating that close political ties with Pakistan will not prevent US authorities from going after Kashmiri militants, noting that at least nine of the 11 Lashkar suspects were US citizens but even they were not spared.

The Indian lobby points out that Faris’s arrest appeared in the American newspapers on June 20, the day Gen Musharraf arrived in Boston and the indictment of eight other suspects came on June 27 when the Pakistani leader was in Los Angeles.

Documents submitted in the court of a magistrate judge in Alexandria, Virginia, show that the indictment relies partly on the testimony of an unnamed, un-indicted co-conspirator who was close to the group and who turned approver to provide incriminating information about the others as part of a deal with the government.

The charges reveal that the men met often at private homes and mosques in the greater Washington area to hear lectures on and discuss the righteousness of jihad in Kashmir, Chechnya and elsewhere. They also watched videotapes of terrorist attacks.