Confession: Killers planned to blow up hotel

Published on Sunday 30 November 2008 00:38

THE only surviving Mumbai terrorist was ordered to "kill until the last breath", it was reported last night.

Azam Amir Kasab told interrogators that he and nine others hoped to take as many as 5,000 lives during last week's bloody attack on India's commercial capital, during which they planned to blow up the Taj Mahal Palace hotel.

The Pakistani has reportedly admitted that he and his fellow killers targeted Britons and Americans in their two-day rampage.

Kasab allegedly told investigators: "I have done right. I have no regrets."

His story, relayed from sources inside the Mumbai Police,

revealed that the 10 terrorists had trained in the mountains of Kashmir for five months, carefully planning every detail of their "operation". The team even learned how to carry out a marine assault, allowing them to creep into Mumbai by boat.

Sources close to the Mumbai Police said Kasab had outlined plans to blow up the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, one of India's architectural icons, after executing all British and American guests. However, the terrorists underestimated the strength of the hotel building, which was put up 105 years ago during the British Raj.

The terrorists, according to leaked accounts of Kasab's interrogation, had researched Mumbai and the Taj Mahal Palace hotel before the attack, visiting as students.

He claimed, reports citing police said, that the attackers had used the trip to identify what they called "strike locations" and to familiarise themselves with city roads.

Kasab was not one of the four-man group that attacked the Taj. He and another man headed for Mumbai's main commuter railway station, where they mowed down dozens of people with their Kalashnikov automatic rifles.

The terrorists were also armed with hand grenades and automatic pistols.

Kasab said the terrorists kept in touch with each other using BlackBerries.

The attacker, described by Indian police as "baby-faced", also outlined how he and the others came to Mumbai by sea from Karachi. He said a friend, named as 25-year-old Abu Ismail, was a trained sailor and had steered a boat across the Arabian Gulf using GPS equipment.

The 10 attackers eventually transferred to speed boats and rubber dinghies to make the final trip to the Gateway of India, the Victorian port of Mumbai.

After attacking the railway station, Kasab and another terrorist hijacked a police 4x4, killing the two officers inside. Kasab told investigators he had also attacked a petrol station and blown up a taxi before being stopped.

Kasab was the only terrorist to be taken alive – and only because he pretended to be dead when Indian commandos overcame him. Officers only noticed he was living when they saw him breathing in an ambulance on the way to a city morgue. The killer was taken to hospital with minor injuries. He reportedly told medical staff: "I do not want to die. Please put me on saline."

Meanwhile, UK security services were last night still trying to determine whether British Muslims had been involved in the Mumbai massacre.

Reports that seven of the gunmen had links to Britain created feverish speculation about the origins of the terrorists and led to police and security services analysing their intelligence to find out whether any had lived in, or visited, the UK.

Yesterday, the Foreign Office said there was "no evidence" yet to suggest any of the terrorists were connected to Britain.

According to one report, four of the terrorists, two of whom are dead, had spent time in the UK.

In another account, Vilasrao Deshmukh, the chief minister of Maharashtra state – of which Mumbai is the capital – was reported to have said that two Pakistanis of British descent were among the terrorists.

But a spokesman for the Foreign Office said: "We have spoken to Indian authorities at a high level and they have said that there is no evidence that any of the terrorists, either captured or dead, are British."

Referring to the comments reportedly made by Deshmukh, he said: "He said no such thing either publicly or privately."

Speculation linking the attackers with Bradford, West Yorkshire, was dismissed by the Leeds-based Counter Terrorism Unit. And Cleveland Police said they had no information about any suspect coming from Hartlepool.

According to security agencies, more than 4,000 British Muslims have passed through terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, joining groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, the prime suspects for the attacks. This potentially fertile recruitment pool for the Islamist international jihad has inflamed claims of British involvement.

Brigadier Ed Butler, a former commander of the British troops in Helmand, southern Afghanistan, said: "There is a link between Kandahar and urban conurbations in the UK. This is something that the British military understands but the British public does not."

Last year, RAF Nimrod intelligence-gathering aircraft tracking Taliban radio signals in Afghanistan heard insurgent fighters speaking with Yorkshire and Midlands accents.

After speaking with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Gordon Brown said there was no suggestion of a British link at the moment.

He added: "At no point has the Prime Minister of India suggested to me that there is evidence at this stage of any terrorist of British origins, but obviously these are huge investigations that are being done and I think that it will be premature to draw any conclusions at all."

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith also said UK authorities had "no knowledge" of any British links with the massacre.

A team of detectives from Scotland Yard is flying to Mumbai to help Indian authorities with the investigation.