MUMBAI, May 3, (Agencies): An Indian court on Monday convicted a Pakistani man of murder and waging war for his role in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks that left 166 people dead in the heart of India’s financial capital. Two Indians accused of helping plot the attacks were acquitted.
Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor of the attack’s 10 gunmen, sat impassively with his head bowed as the verdicts were read. He was convicted in one of the siege’s bloodiest episodes, when he and an accomplice killed and wounded dozens of people at one of Mumbai’s busiest train stations. Photos of Kasab striding through the station, an assault rifle in his hand, became iconic images of the attacks.
Kasab was convicted on nearly all the 86 charges against him, including murder and waging war against India. While an exact total of the convictions was not immediately available, the handful of acquittals appear to have been for relatively minor charges, such as forging an identification card. Sentencing is expected to be Tuesday. He faces a possible death sentence.
Meanwhile, India’s India’s Home Minister said Monday that the conviction of the lone surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attacks was a message to Pakistan not to export terror.
“The judgment itself is a message to Pakistan that they should not export terror to India,” P. Chidambaram told reporters after the conviction of Pakistani national Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab for his role in the 60-hour siege.
“If they do, and we apprehend the terrorists, we will be able to bring them to justice and give them exemplary punishment.”
He said the trial was a triumph for the Indian justice system and an answer to critics who had called for Kasab to be hanged without due legal process.
“The trial of Kasab underlines the fact that India is a country governed by rule of law,” he said.
While the lone surviving gunman of the 2008 Mumbai attacks was convicted Monday and now faces the gallows, two Indians also on trial were acquitted, bringing an end to their near two-year ordeal.
The judge at the high-security court in Mumbai ordered that Fahim Ansari and Sabauddin Ahmed, accused of helping the gunmen with logistical support, be released from prison, leaving the prosecution with questions to answer.
Ansari was arrested in February 2008 and accused of being trained by the banned Pakistan-based Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) after an attack on a police camp in northern India. Sabauddin was his alleged accomplice.
But judge M.L. Tahaliyani said the “quality and quantity” of the prosecution evidence — that they made hand-drawn maps of targets in Mumbai and passed them on to LeT commanders in Pakistan — was lacking.
In the meantime, farmers in the remote impoverished home town of the surviving gunman of the Mumbai massacre angrily denounced his conviction as a travesty of justice at the hands of “infidel” India on Monday.
The town of Faridkot in the Pakistani farming belt of Punjab province has become notorious as the home of Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, convicted of taking part in the November 2008 bloodbath that killed 166 people in Mumbai.
Power supplies were down due to Pakistan’s dire electricity crisis, but the verdict was the talk of the town as people sat in shops and small restaurants along the main road awaiting news of his fate.