The 50 Worst Terrorist Attacks (34 page)

Police said the nine dead gunmen came from central Punjab Province of Pakistan. They identified them as Abu Ismail, Hafiz Arshad, Babr Imran, Javed, Shoab, Nazih, Nasr, Abdul Rahman, and Fahad Ullah, all between 20 and 28 years old.

Surviving terrorist Kasab admitted membership in Lashkar (renamed Jamaat-ud-Dawa in 2005) and claimed that terrorist group members had trained for a year before the attack at four Lashkar camps near Muzzafrabad, Mansera, Muritke, and Karachi. On February 25, 2009, India charged Kasab with 13 crimes, including murder, “waging war against India,” and entering a train station without a ticket. Two unnamed Pakistani Army officials accused of training the gunmen were also charged. Indian citizens Fahim Ansari and Sabauddin were accused of providing maps for the attacks. The charge sheet ran to 11,280 pages, citing more than 2,000 witnesses and naming 37 others alleged to have planned the attacks.

During his trial, Kasab testified that Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi (variant Lakhwi), Pakistani head of the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, had plotted the attacks. Doctors declared Kasab of adult age when he claimed he was underage and could not be tried as an adult. After pleading guilty and stating he was “ready to die,” on December 18, 2009, he recanted his confession, saying he was a mere tourist and was tortured into the confession. The HBO documentary
Terror in Mumbai
reported that Kasab had been sold to the terrorists three months before the attack by his father so that his brothers and sisters could marry. On January 18, 2010, Kasab told the court that four of the gunmen were Indian, despite government claims that all of the terrorists were Pakistanis. On May 3, 2010, a Mumbai court issued a 1,522-page verdict that convicted Kasab of most of the eighty-six counts against him. He and an accomplice gunned down 58 people and wounded 104 others at the train station. The next day, he was sentenced to death. On February 21, 2011, the Mumbai High Court upheld Kasab's death sentence. On November 21, 2012, Kasab was executed by hanging.

Others investigated, sought, charged, or arrested included Tauseef Rehman and Mukhtar Ahmed Sheikh for buying 22 SIM (subscriber identity cards) used by the terrorists; Laskar leaders Lakhvi, Yusuf Muzammil, and Hafiz Sayeed (on June 2, 2009, the Lahore High Court in Pakistan ruled that there was insufficient evidence to hold Sayeed); Jaish-i-Muhammad leader Masood Azhar; Lashkar detainee Zarar Shah (on December 31, 2008, Shah confessed to involvement in planning the attacks, according to Pakistani authorities); and Hamad Ameen Sadiq, shown by a trail of evidence followed by Pakistani Federal Investigation Agency officials to be the “main operator” of the conspiracy. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, cleric and head of the banned Jamaat-ud Dawa, was
placed under house arrest in connection with the case by Pakistan on September 21, 2009. India said Saeed had masterminded the Mumbai siege. On October 12, 2009, a Lahore court dismissed all charges for lack of evidence. On May 25, 2010, Pakistan's Supreme Court confirmed the ruling.

By February 12, 2009, Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik had admitted that “some part of the conspiracy has taken place in Pakistan.” On November 25, 2009, a court in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, charged seven individuals with acts of terrorism, money laundering, supplying funds for terrorism, and providing tools for terrorism. All pleaded not guilty. They all faced the death penalty. They were identified as mastermind Lakhvi, Umar Abjul Wajid, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jameel Ahmed, Mohammad Younas Anjum, Mazhar Iqbal, and Sadiq. A November 2009
HBO
documentary reported the terrorists called themselves the Army of the Righteous.

On December 9, 2009, U.S. citizen David Coleman Headley was charged in Chicago with videotaping targets—including the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels, the Leopold Café, the Jewish outreach center, and the train station—and briefing the Mumbai attackers. Authorities said he even took boat trips to scout out the town's main harbor, a trip the terrorists later took on the operation. After pleading not guilty, on January 14, 2010, Headley was recharged along with Tahawwur Hussain Rana in a 12-count indictment that included a violent attack on Danish newspaper
Jyllands Posten
along with helping in the Mumbai attack.

On March 18, 2010, Headley pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Chicago to charges that he had scouted the targets for the Mumbai attack and planned the Danish newspaper attack. In a plea agreement, Headley agreed to testify against codefendant Rana. The Department of Justice agreed not to seek the death penalty. The United States granted access to Indian, Pakistani, and Danish investigators but not extradition. The plea agreement indicated that he was in contact with an al Qaeda cell in Europe. On January 24, 2013, Headley was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Epilogue:
On April 25, 2011, prosecutors in the U.S. District Court in Chicago charged four Pakistanis—Sajid Mir, Abu Qahafa, Mazhar Iqbal, and Major Iqbal—in a superseding indictment with some combination of aiding and abetting the murder of U.S. citizens in India; conspiracy to murder, maim, and bomb public places; and providing material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba in connection with the Mumbai attack. None were in U.S. custody. Headley claimed that Major Iqbal was a member of Pakistan's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Prosecutors said Mir was Headley's handler; Qahafa trained others in combat techniques; and Mazhar Iqbal was a Lashkar commander who passed messages to Headley via defendant Rana.

On May 23, 2011, Headley told the Chicago court in Rana's trial that the ISI recruited him and played a key role in the Mumbai attacks. He told the court that “ISI provided assistance to Lashkar: financial, military, and moral support.” He said that ISI Major Iqbal chose the targets—including the Chabad House—route, and safe house, and that Iqbal was involved in the plot to attack
Jyllands-Posten
in Denmark.

The early years of the 2010s included
worst
attacks that were not as spectacular as others on the list, but nonetheless showed the continuing determination of radical Islamists to continue their misinterpretation of the Koran's call for jihad. Of note was the expansion of the al Qaeda franchise to the Horn of Africa, where al-Shabaab initially established a beachhead in the failed state of Somalia, already overrun by seafaring pirates. The group expanded its scope of operations, killing scores of World Cup fans in Kampala, conducting operations in Kenya, and attacking Ethiopian and other African peace keepers. At least one faction of the fissiparous al-Shabaab expressed formal fealty to al Qaeda Central. Meanwhile, Chechen terrorists, many with contacts with the remaining members of al Qaeda Central, continued their depredations on Russian turf. As of this writing, they had not expanded their targeting out of the motherland.

Western responses to terrorists overseas moved from concentration on capturing detainees and holding them for trials, which might not come for years, to conducting unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) operations designed to kill individual terrorists. Two major successes in taking terrorist leaders off the streets entailed the U.S. SEAL Team 6—killing of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden in his walled compound in Abbotabad, just outside the Pakistan Armed Forces' equivalent of West Point, and a drone strike that killed American propagandist and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) operational leader Anwar al-Aulaqi, who had been in contact with and inspired numerous individuals who had conducted or tried to conduct operations against U.S. targets.

The death of al-Aulaqi, effectively the minister of propaganda for AQAP, and the loss of bin Laden, the face of the far-flung organization, left gaping holes in al Qaeda's ability to conduct and influence operations. However, their deaths did not end such publications as the online
AQAP magazine
Inspire
nor a host of jihadi and jihobbyist websites, some of which were occasionally hacked and taken offline.
Inspire
, true to its name, inspired several “almosts” for the
50 Worst
list. An Arabic-language tribute to
Inspire
, aimed at Islamist women, appeared in the early years of the decade.

As the decade continued, the United States planned to conduct trials in military courts against several al Qaeda leaders who were responsible for several of the
50 Worst
, including 9/11 and the USS
Cole
attacks.

Overview:
The Moscow subway is one of the largest in the world, with 7 million riders each day. In a rush-hour attack, two women wearing explosive belts filled with bolts and iron bars boarded and detonated the belts at two different stops along the same line, killing themselves and 40 commuters. The incident shocked the world. One woman was the widow of a terrorist leader, and the other reportedly a young schoolteacher.

Incident:
On March 29, 2010, at 7:56
A.M.,
a female suicide bomber detonated her device on a Moscow subway train at the Lubyanka stop near the Kremlin and Federal Security Service headquarters, killing at least 23 people. Forty-five minutes later, a second female suicide bomber killed at least 12 more people at the Park Kultury station, four stops further on the same train line. Eighty others were wounded in the rushhour attacks. The explosive belts were packed with bolts and iron bars that served as shrapnel. Chechen rebels were suspected. Police began searching for two suspected female accomplices and released photos of the suicide bombers.

On March 31, 2010, Doku Umarov, who in 2009 had re-formed a suicide battalion, claimed credit. He said the attacks were in retaliation for a raid in February 2010 in which 20 people were killed, charging that authorities used knives to execute innocent forest villagers.

The first bomber was identified by her father, Rasul Magomedov, as his daughter Maryam Sharilova, 28, a schoolteacher in Dagestan. He identified her from a photo of the severed head that had run in the Russian media and that had been sent to him via a friend's cell phone. He said she earned a degree in math and psychology from the Dagestan Pedagogical University in 2005. Upon returning home, she taught computer science at a local school. She was the widow of a terrorist leader who was killed in October 2009.

Investigators announced that the second bomber was Dzhanet Abdullayeva, 17, widow of an Islamist rebel leader. Authorities shared photos of her posing with a handgun and a grenade. She grew up in Khasavyurt,
40 miles from the site of the March 31, 2010, bombing in Dagestan. Her husband, Umulat Magomedov, 30, died in a New Year's Eve shootout with security forces in Khasavyurt. They met via the Internet.

A bus driver said the suicide bombers and a man traveled to Moscow from the North Caucasus with shuttle traders.

Authorities were investigating whether the duo were part of the 30 suicide bombers allegedly recruited by Alexander Tikhomirov before his death. They were to be trained at a madrassa in Turkey.

There is some debate as to whether the women detonated their own belts via cell phone calls or if male counterparts set off the explosives via remote control from a Moscow apartment.

On August 21, 2010, Russian security forces killed Magomed-Ali Vag-abov, orchestrator of the suicide bombings, in a raid in Dagestan Province.

Overview:
Al-Shabaab considers itself at war with the African Union peace keepers (African Union Mission in Somalia; AMISOM) in Somalia and chose the airing of the World Cup soccer finals to make its point clear that anyone supporting AMISOM is al-Shabaab's enemy. Although an al-Shabaab spokesman claimed the explosive devices were planted, some evidence points to suicide bombers. The Ethiopian Village location may have been chosen because Ethiopia is al-Shabaab's perceived enemy.

Incident:
At 10:30
P.M
., on July 11, 2010, three bombs at two sites in Kampala, Uganda, killed 74 people and injured another 85 while they watched the World Cup soccer finale on television. The first bomb went off at the Ethiopian Village restaurant. Fifty minutes later, two other bombs exploded at the Kyandondo Rugby Club restaurant. The larger second bomb killed many who were trying to help victims of the initial blast.

The dead included 28 Ugandans, 1 Irish, 1 Indian, 1 American, and 11 Ethiopians and Eritreans. The American was Nate Henn, 25, of Wilmington, Delaware, who worked for the charity Invisible Children. Injuries included broken bones, flesh wounds, temporary blindness, and hearing problems. Five Americans were hospitalized; two were in serious condition. Six injured Americans hailed from the Christ Community United Methodist Church in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, and were working with a local congregation as part of an American church mission.

Al-Shabaab claimed credit. Referring to the 6,000 African Union peacekeepers in Somalia as “collaborators,” al-Shabaab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage told a press conference:

Sheikh Moktar Abu Zubeyr, self-described emir of al-Shabaab in Somalia, posted on an al Qaeda website, “My message to the Ugandan and Burundian nations is that you will be the target for our retribution to the massacres perpetrated against the Somali men, women and children in Mogadishu by your forces.” One of the group's commanders, Sheik Yusuf Sheik Issa, told the
Associated Press
in Mogadishu that “Uganda is one of our enemies. Whatever makes them cry, makes us happy. May Allah's anger be upon those who are against us.”