US declassified files from Osama bin Laden's house: References to contributions from 'Indian brother' emerge

NEW DELHI: Accounts of contributions of over Rs 6 lakh by an ‘Indian brother’ to Al Qaida and propaganda material that welcomed the 26/11 Mumbai attack as an inspiration for global jihad and denounced the ISI as ‘dogs’ are among the documents seized by US Navy Seals during their 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad.

In a series of documents that have now been declassified by the US, there are several references to India. There is a reference to an unnamed ‘Indian brother in Madina’ who contributed two tranches of money to the Al Qaida funds in May and July 2009 — Rs 2,92,400 and Rs 3,35,000. The total ‘funds’ recorded amount to over Rs 48 crore.

There are also two unexplained references in a document dated October 2011 to a person named ‘Dawood’ and the ‘transfer of money’. The seized documents include news articles on criminal charges against David Coleman Headley, a key strategist behind the 26/11 attacks. The hundreds of pages of material recovered by US forces in the raid that led to the killing of bin Laden also included a propaganda document titled ‘Terror Franchise’ by former Al Qaida’s external operations chief Saleh al Somali that praised the 26/11 Mumbai attack.

“The heroic Fidai operations in Bombay — India’s economical capital — in which several western targets were struck in which many Americans and other Westerners were killed. Following that, was the beautiful huge bombing — also in India — of the western German bakery mainly visited by Jews and western nationals in general…,” the document, which called for global jihad and is subtitled ‘The unstoppable assassin’, reads.






Somali is believed to have been killed in a US drone strike in 2009. The ‘Terror Franchise’ article also slammed the ISI for playing a deadly cover war with CIA to target Taliban cadres. “ISI dogs gathered the somewhat freely available info from their countless money-worshipping tribal agents, or from the many captured among the Mujahideen and civilians, in check posts, sudden ambushes, and sudden raids on houses during the preparation stage through 2003-2006,” it said.





There are also references to a possible disconnect with the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistanbased terror organisation that ferments violence in India.

In a document titled ‘Lessons learnt from the fall of the Islamic Emirate’ referring to the fall of the Taliban, the author said an operative named Abu Yasir either got arrested due to excessive usage of internet or ‘the treachery of LeT’.