Mumbai gunman Ajmal Amir Kasab laughs at terror charges

The sole gunman to be captured after the Mumbai massacre laughed yesterday when he was asked in court if he understood the charges against him.

Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, was one of ten militants accused of launching a series of commando-style raids across Mumbai in November, claiming 166 lives. He and an accomplice are accused of killing 58 people at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the city’s main railway station. He is charged with waging war on India and carrying out dozens of murders.

“Kasab was smiling throughout the hearing,” Ujjwal Nikam, the special public prosecutor, told The Times. “He laughed when the judge asked him if he understood the charge sheet.”
The Pakistani national, who was dubbed the baby-faced killer after being caught on camera brandishing an AK47 rifle and carrying a haversack stuffed with ammunition and grenades, could face death by hanging if convicted. He has yet to enter a plea. The nine other gunmen were killed during the attacks.

The charge sheet, which runs to more than 11,000 pages, is written in English and Marathi, the local language in Mumbai. Kasab, whose first language is thought to be Urdu, has claimed he cannot understand it.

Much of the document focuses on Pakistan’s apparent involvement in the terror strike. It names 37 suspects, 35 of whom are Pakistani. They include at least one serving member of the Pakistani Army, a Colonel Saadat Ullah, who is alleged to have helped to set up the internet telephone system through which the gunmen spoke to their handlers during the attacks.
Kasab, who was bearded and wore a grey T-shirt for his court appearance, is accused of being a footsoldier for the Islamist Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist faction, the Pakistan-based group believed to have been behind the Mumbai attack.

Yesterday’s formal hearing was the latest in what has been described in India as the trial of the century. The next formal hearing is scheduled for March 30. The trial will follow and will be held inside a 50ft-tall steel and concrete cage being built around a special courtroom inside Mumbai’s high security Arthur Road Jail, where Kasab is being held.
The structure is being built to thwart a rocket attack because it is feared that Pakistan-based militants will attempt to target the proceedings.

A new bomb-proof corridor, by which Kasab will travel from his cell to the court, has also been built. Residents who live nearby may be issued with identity cards amid fears that militants will attempt to infiltrate the slums surrounding the prison.

Jayant Patil, the home minister of Maharashtra, said that the measures were put into place after intelligence indicated that a plot had been hatched “from abroad” to kill Kasab.
A senior police officer also said that a plan to silence the captured gunman had been unearthed and that it originated from across the border — a reference to Pakistan.
Police have admitted that Kasab knows a limited amount. “We have a limb, not the brain of the organisation behind the attack,” a spokesman said.

He does, however, represent a unique catch as he is the first LeT operative to be caught during a terrorist outrage who is Pakistani.