'ISI used Nepal as terror hub against India'

Washington: In the run up to the hijacking of the Indian Airlines Flight 814 by Pakistan-based terrorist outfits, the ISI had made Nepal a hub of anti-India terror activities from where it pushed huge quantities of RDX into the country, latest US cables released by WikiLeaks say.

In these cable, US officials have conceded that it is the ISI which created various terrorist fronts to carry out terrorist activities in India, including the bomb blasts in the busy areas of Connaught Place, Lajpat Nagar in New Delhi and several cities across the country.

One of such organisation created by ISI in Pakistan was Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Front (JKIF), with its main base in Kathmandu. "To dispatch men and material and to execute explosions in India, Kathmandu was invariably made the nodal point and JKIF exploited the vulnerable Kathmandu-based Kashmiri businessmen for such activities since they had a readymade and clean past. JKIF kingpin Javed Krawah himself used to run a carpet business in Kathmandu," said the US cable signed off by none other than the then US Ambassador to India, Frank Wisner.

JKIF, says the cable dated July 8, 1997, was controlled from Pakistan by ISI and Tiger Memon, the prime accused in 1993 Mumbai blast case. "Their contact in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir was Bilal Beg, who was running an indoctrination camp near Muzaffarabad, funded extensively by the ISI to carry out terrorist acts in India. One Colonel Farooq of Pakistan ISI tasked Bilal Beg and Tiger Memon to utilize Kathmandu-based activists Lateef and Javed Krawah to set off blasts in Delhi before the Lok Sabha elections," it said.

According to the cable, a team of committed JKIF cadres were given a two week specialised capsule course in explosives near the Afghan border in March April 1996. In May 21, 1996; this JKIF team set off a very high intensity explosion at Lajpat Nagar in which 13 persons were killed and 40 injured.

"The RDX used in this blast was brought from Kathmandu," the cable said. The subsequent explosion in a Rajasthan roadways bus near Dausa on May 22, 1996 was also engineers by the JKIF. "Another JKIF team under the leadership of Abdul Gani, AKA Assadullah, was sent to execute a bomb blast in Ahmedabad," it said.

JKIF again planned a chain of explosions in Delhi before Republic Day 1997 at the behest of Pakistan ISI and Tiger Memon, the cable said. According to the US cable, JKIF was formed in September 1995 by one Sajjad Ahmed Kenu, who was a well know activists of Ikhwan-ul-Musalmeen (IUM).

Sajjad Kenu had escaped from Sri Nagar Jail in 1995 and had resurfaced as the supreme commander of the JKIF in 1995. Since its inception, the JKIF had been under considerable pressure from its Pakistan-based leadership t carry out bomb blasts outside J&K, particularly in Delhi, the cable said.