Dawood Ibrahim - Reliable sources say that many fingers are being pointed at Dawood Ibrahim’s role in much of terrorism in Indian subcontinent and also in the world. It is Pakistan’s disgrace of giving shelter for this world criminal. US intelligence agencies are finding that he is one of the main backers of Al-Qaida.
Powerful Indian gangster a strong backer of terrorism
Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun
Published: Monday, September 10, 2007
In all the inevitable soul-searching over the next few days accompanying the sixth anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, one name unlikely to draw much attention, at least in the West, is Dawood Ibrahim.
But perhaps he should.
This extraordinary character, an Indian national about 52 years old, is an entrepreneur with a mind-boggling portfolio of enterprises
Ibrahim is don of Mumbai’s major organized crime syndicate, the fabled D-Company, beside which the Mafia seems like a corner store operation.
Much of the D-Company’s street cred stems from movies glamourizing Ibrahim and his gangsters as folk heroes, produced just down the road from Mumbai in Bollywood and financed, of course, by Ibrahim. As much as anyone, Ibrahim symbolizes that grey area between India’s movie industry and the underworld, and which has seen several Bollywood stars as famous for their courtroom performances as their on-camera action.
Ibrahim is also a fervent Muslim. And it is this that has catapulted him into the world of al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, international drug dealing, money laundering, and a star spot on the U.S. government’s list of global terrorists.
It’s not only Washington that wants Ibrahim dead or alive – so does the Indian government. New Delhi believes the Pakistani government, and especially the military’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency (ISI), is sheltering him.
Ibrahim and his financial empire are seen as essential ingredients in the survival of al-Qaida and the Taliban insurgents whom Canadian, British and Dutch forces are battling in southern Afghanistan.
Opium grown in Afghanistan and trafficked through Taliban networks is believed to be transported to Europe, where it is processed into heroin before being sold locally or moved on to North America. All of this travels through Ibrahim’s courier systems in Central Asia.
Recent reports say Afghanistan now produces 95 per cent of the world’s illegal heroin, and is the major source of financing for the Taliban insurgency.
At the same time, Ibrahim is believed by Indian police to control much of the “hawala” system in Pakistan and India. Hawala is an ancient but still very popular invisible method of transferring money from country to country by use of credit guarantees. Washington has often railed that the system is tailor-made for financing terrorist operations.
That Ibrahim is still at the centre of a spiderweb of criminal enterprises is in itself a testament to the man’s perverted genius. His empire should have crumbled in 1993, but instead he seems to have rocketed ever upwards.
In December 1992, extremist Hindu nationalists attacked and demolished the Babri Muslim Mosque at Ayodhya in northern India.
Ibrahim, it seems, was incensed by this outpouring of anti-Muslim violence, although there are also strong suspicions that he already had links to Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, which persuaded him to seek vengeance.
Using his D-Company network and scores of unemployed Muslim street youths, Ibrahim launched a massive terrorist attack on Mumbai. Thirteen bombs exploded in the city on March 12, 1993, killing at least 250 people and injuring another 700.
Shortly before the attacks, Ibrahim and some of his closest cohorts left India for the United Arab Emirates, but he later moved to Karachi, Pakistan’s southern port and commercial centre.
Here Ibrahim has rebuilt his empire around his links to ISI, al-Qaida and the Taliban.
As the U.S. assessed the al-Qaida network after the 2001 terrorist attacks, Ibrahim came into view. In 2003, Washington designated him a terrorist and ordered financial sanctions imposed on anyone doing business with him.
This does not seem to have cramped Ibrahim’s style.
Pakistan does not have a film industry offering Ibrahim stars and starlets with whom to consort. In Pakistan, the megastars are cricket players, and Ibrahim’s daughter is married to Javed Miandad, Pakistan’s greatest batsman and one of the great cricket players of all time.
The Indian police are not allowing Ibrahim to live in peace, however. In November of last year, Mumbai police managed to get 10 of Ibrahim’s gang members extradited from the United Arab Emirates.
Now, one of the techniques used by Indian police in their interrogation of prisoners is to administer the so-called “truth drug”, sodium pentothal – although resultant confessions are not used in court, as they are deemed too unreliable.
But as a result of the gangsters’ drug-induced babbling, New Delhi says it has a detailed picture of Ibrahim’s operations and is demanding Pakistan hand him over. Pakistan says it doesn’t know where he is, although there are persistent reports Ibrahim was detained by police in Karachi after a gun battle two weeks ago.
It would be unwise to bet, however, that Ibrahim’s time has run out.
