US asks Pakistan to find Ilyas Kashmiri

NEW DELHI: The US has asked Pakistan to hunt down Ilyas Kashmiri, the HuJI commander who acted as David Headley’s handler. Kashmiri was tasked with the Copenhagen terror plot against the Danish paper that carried the caricature of the Prophet.

Pakistan’s The News said the US authorities have sought from the Pakistani government an early arrest and extradition of Ilyas Kashmiri. Kashmiri is being accused of coordinating a suicide attack on the CIA Forward Operating Base of Chapman in the Khost province of Afghanistan on December 31, 2009, which killed seven CIA officers and injured six others.

The 313 Brigade of the HuJI that Kashmiri headed was more interested in a spectacular operation in Denmark than in India. It was the FBI’s monitoring of the plans for an attack in Copenhagen that led to the arrest of Headley and the subsequent discovery of his role in India.

According to security expert B Raman, the FBI affidavits clearly suggest that Headley was a self-motivated jihadi who volunteered his services for LeT and Ilyas Kashmiri. Headley had established independent contacts with LeT operatives and Ilyas Kashmiri.
The News report quoting a Pakistan interior ministry official said the authorities are trying to hunt down Ilyas Kashmiri for his involvement in terrorist activities carried out in different parts of the country. “No. 4 on the most wanted list of the Pakistani Ministry of Interior, Ilyas Kashmiri is a veteran of the Kashmir Jihad and spent several years in an Indian jail. He was arrested after the December 2003 twin suicide attacks on Gen Musharraf’s presidential cavalcade in Rawalpindi, but released a few weeks later due to lack of evidence. He later shifted his base to the Waziristan region and joined hands with Baitullah Mehsud to establish a training camp in North Waziristan,” the report said.