Captured Terrorist On Mumbai Massacre: "I Was Told To Kill To My Last Breath"

The only captured terrorist in the horrific attacks in Mumbai, India has given the police an account of the massacre. The Daily Mail reports:

The only terrorist captured alive after the Mumbai massacre has given police the first full account of the extraordinary events that led to it - revealing he was ordered to 'kill until the last breath'.

Azam Amir Kasab, 21, from Pakistan, said the attacks were meticulously planned six months ago and were intended to kill 5,000 people.

He revealed that the ten terrorists, who were highly trained in marine assault and crept into the city by boat, had planned to blow up the Taj Mahal Palace hotel after first executing British and American tourists and then taking hostages.

Mercifully, the group, armed with plastic explosives, underestimated the strength of the
105-year-old building's solid foundations.

As it is, their deadly attacks have left close to 200 confirmed dead, with the toll expected to rise significantly once the hotel has been fully searched by security forces.

Yesterday, Kasab chillingly went through details of Wednesday night's killing spree across the city, which ended when he was cornered by police.

The AP has compiled a timeline of the Mumbai terror attacks:

9:21 p.m. Wednesday, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus __ Two young men walk casually through Mumbai's main railway station, a worn Victorian hulk bustling with late commuters heading home, scurrying past small food stands and juice bars and vendors selling newspapers. They enter near the taxi stand, where long lines of battered black and yellow cabs wait for fares. One wears khaki cargo pants and a blue T-shirt. A pair of small knapsacks are slung over a shoulder. He looks like a college kid.

They are, says a photographer who follows them on part of their grim journey, "backpackers with assault rifles."

Story continues below

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The two -- and other death squads working in pairs -- are to wreak carnage in landmark after landmark across Mumbai over the next three days, creating panic in this normally unflappable city and killing more than 195 people...

...About 9:30 p.m.

Nariman House, Mumbai headquarters of the ultra-Orthodox Chabad Lubavitch movement.

A gunshot startles the family of Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and others inside the recently renovated five-story Jewish center on a bumpy, unpaved back road off a main street in Mumbai's trendy Colaba neighborhood. The pale yellow building, with its synagogue, kosher dining room and friendly rabbi, was a magnet for Israeli backpackers looking for a place to celebrate holidays while on vacation and an important religious center for Mumbai's small Jewish community.

Someone must be lighting firecrackers, thought Sandra Samuel, a maid at the center.

Then a gunman came up the stairs.

She and another employee duck into a room and hid in terror as explosions and gunshots rattle the building through the night.

"They destroyed everything, the lift, the dining room, everything," she says later.

At about the same time

Leopold Cafe and Bar

The place known as Leo's is one of the city's famous tourist restaurants, a joint crammed with glass-topped tables, old travel posters and lounging backpackers drinking cheap beer.

There are maybe 100 people inside when two gunmen appear in the entrances. One lobs in a grenade. Then they open fire.

"It was total chaos ... People didn't know what was going on. Some hit the floor, some ran out of the side entrance or tried to find a place to hide," says Farzad Jehani, who owns the restaurant with his brother.

The assault lasts, perhaps, two minutes. When it's over, at least four foreigners and three Indians are dead, though the brothers aren't sure because patrons quickly rush the casualties to hospitals in passing cars and taxis.

By then the gunmen have left, jogging through the streets and apparently moving on to one of India's most famous hotels just a few blocks away.

"They weren't aiming at anyone in particular. It was like they wanted to empty their magazines and do as much damage here as possible before heading to the Taj," Jehani says.

Read the full timeline here.

Visit HuffPost's Mumbai Attacks BigNews Page for complete coverage.

Comments

[anshumanmishra]

The real reason why the Mumbai attacks happened:
The Pakistan Army, that very ragtag outfit wearing fancy uniforms and having its posterior whipped and handed back to Islamabad on a platter by the Taliban, wants to extricate itself from a situation over which it has no control. By stage-managing this attack, it has managed to create a diversion. No longer will it have to face the Taliban, of which it is mortally scared; instead, by coming to the Eastern borders, its soldiers can relax and continue controlling the "civilian" administration.
It knows fully well that it has little to fear from the Indian response to these attacks; in the worst case, it'll probably have to hand over a few militants to the Indian government. In any case, it knows the United States will not allow full-fledged conflict.
To summarize, the Pakistan Army can see itself in a win-win situation: it avoids the humiliation of being shamefully defeated by a gang of brigands armed with a couple of pistols, and it gets to save its soldiers, which it needs to run the government.

[GuyRC]

Isn't the Indian military is an allie of the Taliban, and other islamist groups? They were in the recent past. They know they need to maintain the appearance of fighting them to keep American $billions flowing their way.

[deepBlue5]

bang on target !!!

[riafern]

lets be clear about one thing India does not want to attack civilians in Pakistan ,if they wanted to the would have done all these yrs ..they are asking for ISI funded terrorist & that area ....ISI gets money from various sorces ..radicals and the Americans for helping in the wa on terror which then goes back to the very terrorist US is fighting ....so there is this vicious circle ...India is doing well ,there is no benefit in getting involved in Pakistan ...compare the 2 economies & produaction level ...this is provocation by militants to get the 2 nuclear countries to war ...
US can help by pushing Pakistan's new govt to crack down on these nutjobs ...only then India will be calm ...
There is an unrest against politicians in India that they have been to weak ....

[chazzman]

Lets see, the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi's therefore we should have nuked Saudi Arabia. No? Then why should India start a war with Pakistan because of a few (10) misguided terrorist. Think people before you go ape and start a nuclear war that will cause the end times. Oh I forgot that is what the neocon's want.

[slaxx]

i think it's more than the fact that they were pakistani; it's the fact that the pakistani gov't harbors terrorists and does nothing about their training camps there.

[Judyisacutie]

I've heard that in some Native American cultures, they'd take a criminal out to the wilderness and leave him there. Maybe the authorities in India should drop him off somewhere in the Himalayas with a jacket and a flashlight and forget out him.

[anonimost]

I guess this... this... person (to use the term loosely) is one of those "if someone told you to jump offf a bridge, would you?" people.

Not being able to think for oneself and buying into a ra dical ideology is probably the weakest act second to his vi olent actions.

[DMcMillan]

Is there any truth to the rumors of the ISI being funded by the CIA?

[vishix]

American has given $10 billion to Pakistan since the War on Terror started. I am sure most of that went into the ISI and army.

[deepBlue5]

bang on target !!!

[yerachm]

Could the attack on Mumbai have been prevented? YES!
Is the world safer without Saddam Hussein? NO! In fact, QUITE THE OPPOSITE.

We have spent over a half-trillion dollars on the War in Iraq. And what have we gained? Rather, what have we lost?

First, we’ve lost a major bulwark against Iranian expansion. Iraq is 60% Shiite. Iran is Shiite. Saddam, a minority Sunni, was a US client in containing Iran in the 80s. Now, the majority Shiites hold sway in Iraq. When the last US soldier leaves, look for Iraq to become a part of Greater Iran – an Iran with much greater influence than it would have had with Saddam in place.

Second, we’ve lost a half trillion dollars. While Bush called this a War on Terror, it was simply a war on Iraq. Now imagine if we had left Iraq alone (OK, continue the no-fly zone and the embargo), and poured, say, a mere quarter of a trillion dollars into a true War on Terror. Train Arabic analysts, infiltrate networks, embed listening devices. You get the picture. As it is, we are at square one in the War on Terror.

Today, terrorists can train for six months, hijack a ship in the Arabian Sea, and come to shore at the world’s most populous city, and NOBODY HAS A CLUE.

I’ll grant you, Mr. Bush, you won the War in Iraq. Unfortunately, seven years after 9/11, you have yet to initiate the War on Terror.

[SnapShots]

Bush didn't win the war in Iraq. He lost it the minute he disbanded the Iraqi army and police. It has forever since been a quagmire, victory indefinable.

[Donns]

Is this going to finally come down to a fight to the death amongst religions? It seems that the Islamist are working toward that. Why don't we just go ahead and get to it? No amount of changing our customs and rewriting history as the British have done will apease them. Is killing a bad thing? Why then do the Islamists keep saying it is what they are told to do? Is this a minority of the Islamists who do these things? Do the other Islamists do anything to stop them? Most of the civilized world use other methods of control or to get their way, is that method right?

If it is going to eventually come to killing them or us then let's just get to it and be done with it once and for all.

Is this stupid thinking? Probably, but if we fight the Islamists on their level that's what we must do, or surrender and convert. Would that stop them from killing us? Would we be Sunni or S'hites?

[srdon]

Donns - think it is important for you and everyone else to make a distinction between fanatical Islamists (and don't forget fanatical Christians) and your average believer. it's not a war of religions, but it is a war of beliefs and values.

[vishix]

I think it will come down to war. Just like average Germans didn't believe in war and violence, average muslims also do not believe in war and violence. However, the moderates are not the ones shaping policy in The ISLAMIC Republic of Pakistan. The extremists are embedded in all levels of Pakistani government. The time is near when America and India will have to do the dirty work of removing and replacing this government with one that believes in secular democracy.

I think too many people here are underestimating the nature of the beast. It can't be stopped or reasoned with. It has divine authority to kill anyone. The only language it understands is force.

[SnapShots]

Donns, the fact that you are asking these questions is a monumental step forward. None of your questions are stupid. They get to the root of understanding.

This is not 1.4 billion Muslims collectively bringing Islam against Westerners or Christianity or Judaism. It's a (comparatively) small, murderous band of terrorists who happen to be Muslim and twist the meaning of Islam to their own agenda. Muslims I know, and I know many, all feel these terrorists are dragging Islam through the mud and are going against God's will.

The Muslim world does not condone what happened in Mumbai. They consider it a stain on the name of Islam.

[SteelTrapMind]

Your comment would be easier to believe if for every idiot using Islam to sugar coat his agenda, there weren't 500 more muslims cheering him on in the streets when he sets an effigy of Bush, Obama, a Jew, and American, an infidel, on fire. When one of the truly dangerous does this, we regularly see the images of 500 or 1000, or more, cheering him on. This is more akin to the Post-Civil war American south, where the quiet agreement with the KKK's behaviors permits the KKK to survive, fester, and sometimes grow. Until the public renunciation of such terrorisms is loud, steady, and publicly expected, the problems will continue. Until they recognize that every time they have one of those protests, and they act with mob mentality like they so often are seen to do, they too 'stain' Islam, this won't change. The anti-war, anti-terrorism protests must be louder than the pro-terrorism behaviors for change to occur.

[larry278]

The Brits do gore far better than American MSM. Blood oozes of of this report.

[3rdCitizen]

"The evil that is in the world always comes from ignorance... Although man is more good than bad, that however isn't the real point, but he is more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue. The most incorrigable vice being that of an ignorance that fancies that it knows everything, and therefore takes for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind, and there can be no true good, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness." -- Albert Camus

[bmonaghan]

Nice post. I was just thinking about this quote the other day. A bit off subject - but isn't this the strategy of demigods? They don't manipulate the ignorant as much as convince them with a righteous zealotry that they are not ignorant at all - but smarter than everyone else. That they have a clear understanding of what others do not because others have been corrupted by false knowledge, education, debauchery, the west, the media... This is religion fanaticism; this is Right wing Republican ideology; AM radio bigotry.. you name it. The goal is always - "You know more than they do because you possess the true knowledge." The world is far better off when we humbly presume our ignorance. This is virtue - the virtue, anyway, of Ghandi and some of the other true teachers.

[CaptD]

Really Nice Post, Yourself! It is refreshing to read first a comment and then a reply both which are "right on target!.

[fumes]

is it ignorant to believe in a god?

[sofla954]

In that it requires a suspension of logic and reason, yes.

In that it leads to such hate and anger, it is dangerous.

[3rdCitizen]

I don't think so -- but since I believe in God, I'm probably biased on the subject. Just as there are close-minded religious ideologies, there are close-minded anti-religious ideologies that are just as likely to believe that they own the truth. Look at the atrocities that have been committed by governments that espoused atheism (e.g. the Soviet Union & communist China).
We all rely on some model of reality with elements that can't be proved (such as the existence of a god or the non-existence of anything that can't be quantified or empirically proved). If we refuse to accept the possibility that our model could be wrong in any significant way, we're blinding our intellects & our consciences.

[captainigor]

short answer: YES!!!!

[Lib2daBone]

Seems to me they have enough evidence to piece together who did this and why. (unless of course, the Vice President of India told the Airforce to "Stand Down" on the day of the attacks)? I wonder if the President of India then sent around a private plane to pick up all the shooters and get them out of the country before they could be interviewed?) I wonder if the insurance policy on the Taj Mahal Hotel was tripled the week before the "surprise" attacks? Nah...could never happen like that.

[chaos4700]

Honestly, that's a discussion for another time. There's a danger in trivializing the atrocities that have happened in Mumbai by politicizing them, whether or not you raise valid points. I'm not saying there shouldn't /be/ the discussion you're trying to raise... but... it seems a bit callous to raise those spectres while the dead are still being buried.

[Ghazala]

Homegrown terrorism is an alarming and very chilling idea. No country likes to believe that violent and armed insurgency and militancy has taken root in its backyard. Countries tend to put the matters at the back burner for as long as possible. India is ignoring the terrorists of RSS, BJP and Bajrang Dal for too long, and now it’s the time for the them to pay back. The recent attack in Mumbai sprouts from within India and is a reaction of Babri Mosque, Gujarat Massacre and scores of other terrorist attacks on Muslims across India.

The Pakistani Spectator
http://www.pakspectator.com

[nick53]

makes my skin shiver...

[captainindustry]

ok then,, india and pakistan are warring against each other. terrorism is the poor man's nuclear weapon, so they open up a can of whup a.ss... they target as many westerners as possible to make sure it gets picked up by the international press. It's always effective to target persons of the jewish persuasion, so they fire offf a few in their general direction.

so what else ya got?
no story here folks. Move on. Go on home.

Westerners.... stay the heck home, or quit livin' large in poverty ravaged countries. you're begging for it.

[rgmwdc]

Have some compassion. Real people lost their lives in a senseless act of violence. Terrorism knows no boundaries.

[sans critic]

he lacks compassion and and a comprehension of the world outside of his narrowminded 48 contiguous borders. if more of the terror victims were white he would be sobbing

[vishix]

You are a very ignorant person. Do you know anything about Mumbai and how it's the financial capital of the 4th largest economy? Do you know what that means for American business and especially Indian business? Do your homework before spewing nonsense.

[captainindustry]

no i don't. please tell me what it means for american business.

[ReasonableBill]

It is most unfortunate. I am not a diplomat, but maybe it is time for retaliation, without nuclear weapons. The terrorists and the countries they come from have to be shown it will stop and they will have to take responsibility for terrorists coming from their country - and they did and do nothing.