INDIA: 2005 COUNTRY REPORTS ON TERRORISM

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 07 NEW DELHI 009485

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

S/CT - RHONDA SHORE, S/CT - ED SALAZAR, AND NCTC

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PTER ASEC KCRM EFIN KHLS KPAO MASS PGOV PHUM
PINR, TINT, KCIP, KTIA, IN, PK, BD, BT, BM, PO
SUBJECT: INDIA: 2005 COUNTRY REPORTS ON TERRORISM

REF: STATE 193439


1. (U) Below is Post's submission for the 2005 Country
Reports on Terrorism:

Begin text:

India remains an important and vigorous ally in the global
war on terror. India's law enforcement, paramilitary and
armed forces neutralized over 1,500 terrorists in 2005,
according to a leading independent Indian terrorism expert.
India-US cooperative counterterrorism training continued to
expand, with hundreds of Indian military and law enforcement
officers trained under State Department and Department of
Defense programs; US troops also received counterterrorism
training in India. Countering terrorist finance took a leap
forward when the Indian government began operationalizing its
Financial Intelligence Unit. Indian diplomatic efforts
forged new bilateral and regional counterterrorism
relationships, and in November 2005 the Indian government
extradited a high-profile suspected terrorist from Portugal.

India has long been a victim of terrorism directed at it by
violent jihadi groups. India,s democratic institutions such
as the Parliament in Delhi and elected officials in numerous
states have been targeted for decades. As in many previous
years, terrorists staged hundreds of attacks on people and
property in 2005; the most prominent terrorism strains are
violent jihadi separatists operating in Jammu and Kashmir;
Maoists in the "Naxalite belt" in eastern India; and
ethno-linguistic nationalists in India,s Northeastern
states. The federal and state governments have tried various
strategies to address some of these grievances within the
context of Indian democracy, but the government is firm that
groups must cease violence before negotiations can begin, and
the government will not entertain territorial concessions.
The Indian government does not support international
terrorism or terrorist groups, either publicly or privately.

An October 29, 2005 attack on a series of markets in New
Delhi killed approximately 60 and injured over 150 on the eve
of India,s most important Hindu holiday -- making it one of
the most egregious terrorist attacks in the country's
history. Kashmir-oriented terrorism is historically the most
lethal and the most politically volatile strain. Reflecting
improved counterinsurgency policies, civilian fatalities from
terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir have substantially decreased
from 2001-2004 (approximately 20% decrease each year),
according to Indian government statistics and a leading
independent Indian terrorism expert. The data for the first
nine months of 2005 showed a continued decline, but a spike
in lethal attacks after the October 8 earthquake will result
in the 2005 levels being roughly equal to those for 2004.
Kashmiri terrorist groups made numerous attacks on elected
Indian and Kashmiri politicians, targeted civilians in public
areas, and attacked security forces, killing more than 500
civilians in 2005, most of whom were Kashmiri Muslims.
Foreign Terrorist Organizations Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LT) and
Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM),at times operating through front
names from camps in Pakistan, claimed responsibility for many
of these attacks. Some of these groups maintain ties with
al-Qaida, although the Indian government does not acknowledge

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a direct al-Qaida presence in the country outside of Kashmir.

Indian terrorism analysts are concerned that Naxal (Maoist
agrarian peasant movement) terrorism, which covers a broad
region of Eastern, Central, and Southern India, is growing in
sophistication and lethality and may be a significant
long-term challenge. Unlike terrorists in Kashmir, these
Naxalite groups are not dependent on support from outside
India. These groups often target Indian security forces. In
September, the Indian Home Ministry and the senior elected
and bureaucratic officials from the 12 Naxal-affected states
(Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh,
Jharkand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa,
Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal) created an
Interstate Task Force to streamline regional anti-Naxal
operations. The Indian government is also modernizing the
weapons and equipment for state police forces in
Naxal-affected areas. Overall deaths due to Naxal violence
have remained relatively constant at approximately 500-600
annually in recent years. The two primary Naxalite groups in
2004 combined to form the banned Communist Party of India
(Maoist); this construct held through 2005.

Terrorism in India,s Northeast states (Arunachal Pradesh,
Assam, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura, and Meghalaya)
consists of many groups -- many based across India,s
frontiers -- that are small in number compared to other
terrorist organizations in India, and their reach does not
extend out of the region. Civilian deaths due to terrorism
in the Northeast have been declining in recent years,
according to Indian government data and a leading independent
Indian terrorism expert. For 2005, between 300 and 350
civilians were killed in Northeast terrorism.

India is an active counterterrorism advocate in international
fora. India is a party to all 12 international conventions
and protocols relating to terrorism, as well as the 1987
South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)
Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism. The Indian
government proposed and continues to support the
Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism that is
currently under consideration at the UN. Regional terrorism
is on the agenda for many of the regional multilateral
organizations in which India participates, including SAARC,
the ASEAN Regional Forum, and BIMSTEC.

The US and India continued to enjoy a broad and deep
counterterrorism relationship in 2005. The US Pacific
Command in September conducted a counterterrorism tabletop
exercise that brought together Indian and American military,
diplomatic, law enforcement, and humanitarian assistance
professionals. For the first time, a US National Guard unit
before deploying to Iraq co-trained with Indian troops at the
Counter Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School in Mizoram in
September-October. The State Department,s Anti-Terrorism
Assistance program has trained hundreds of Indian police and
security officers; Indian security forces also benefit from
Department of Defense/Office of Defense Cooperation programs
and FBI training courses. The US-India Counter-Terrorism
Joint Working Group (CTJWG) has met six times since its
creation in 2000; India also participates in CTJWGs with 15
other countries, and in multilateral CTJWGs with the EU and

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BIMSTEC countries.

The Indian government participates in Cybersecurity Working
Groups with the US, Canada, Israel, and Russia. Professional
exchanges and US-government sponsored training in 2005
advanced the US-India Action Plan for Cybersecurity.

Numerous Indian exporters participate in the Customs Trade
Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT),a Department of
Homeland Security initiative to secure global supply chains.
C-TPAT,s goal is to prevent legitimate commercial lines of
traffic from being exploited by terrorist organizations.

The India-US Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) entered
into force in October 2005. The MLAT provides the framework
for expanding law enforcement cooperation on terrorism and
criminal cases. India also has MLATs in force with 12 other
countries.

The Indian government supports ongoing US investigations in
cases involving American victims of terrorism, and has met
with the Legal Attach at US Embassy New Delhi several times
regarding the 1999 Indian Airlines flight IC-814 hijackers,
who are being tried in absentia by the Indian courts. On
April 26, 2005, a special court in Calcutta convicted seven
men for the January 2002 attack on the American Center in
Calcutta that left five Indian police officers dead and over
20 injured. Among those convicted was Aftab Ansari, the
alleged mastermind of the attack, who was arrested by Dubai
police and deported after he claimed responsibility for the
attack in a telephone call from Dubai to a Calcutta
newspaper. During periods of high alert and after recent
terrorist attacks in New Delhi in 2005 -- notably the May 22
cinema bombings and the October 29 Diwali bombings -- the
Indian and New Delhi governments temporarily boosted external
security around the US Embassy and other American facilities
throughout India.

India has extradition treaties in force with the US and 18
other countries, and reciprocal arrangements with eight.
Extradition between India and the US continues to be a slow
process as a result of cumbersome local court practices and
procedures, reliance on understaffed, undertrained, and
underfunded local police, the large and deliberative Indian
bureaucracy, and the lack in many jurisdictions of
computerized filing systems or modern forensic methods. The
most recent extradition from India to the US was in August
2005; 16 cases remain pending. The most recent extradition
from the US to India was in May 2000; six cases remain
pending. The US extradition requests are related to
criminal, not terrorist, activities.

In November 2005, India successfully extradited terrorist
suspect Abu Salem and an alleged accomplice from Portugal.
Salem is wanted in India for his role in the 1993 Mumbai bomb
blasts that killed over 250 people and left thousands
injured, as well as other charges. India continues to seek
the extradition of US government-Specially Designated Global
Terrorist Dawood Ibrahim, who is also a suspect in the 1993
bombings and is believed by India to live either in Pakistan
or in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.


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The Indian government does not as a matter of policy offer
safe haven to terrorists, and the Indian government has
engaged its neighbors on the matter of cross-border
terrorism. India has worked with Bangladesh, Bhutan, and
Burma to counter Northeast terrorist groups that operate
along the border areas with those countries. Indian border
security forces regularly meet with their counterparts in
Bangladesh and Pakistan to discuss matters of mutual concern.
Although not directly participating in the search for
al-Qaida in Afghanistan, India has been assisting to
reconstruct the war-torn country through funding and
constructing roads, hospitals, schools, power
generation/transmission infrastructure, and the new Afghan
Parliament building. We have no information that any groups
use Indian territory to stage attacks against targets outside
of India, although Nepalese Maoists travel freely through
Indian territory.

India,s counterterrorism efforts are hampered by its
outdated and overburdened law enforcement and legal systems.
The Indian court system is slow and laborious and prone to
corruption; terrorism trials can take years to complete. For
example, an independent Indian think-tank assesses that the
estimated 12,000 civilians killed in terrorism in Jammu and
Kashmir from 1988-2002 generated only 13 convictions up to
December 2002; most of the convictions were for illegal
border crossing or possession of weapons or explosives.

Many of India,s local police forces are often poorly
staffed, trained, and equipped, to combat terrorism
effectively; however, there have been some successes in 2005,
including numerous arrests and the seizure of hundreds of
kilograms of explosives and firearms in operations against
the briefly resurgent Sikh terrorist group Babbar Khalsa
International, which the Indian government holds responsible
for the bombings of two movie theaters in New Delhi in May.
Police in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and in Delhi also recovered
thousands of kilos of explosives as well as weapons caches in
numerous raids throughout 2005 on suspected terrorists and
their support networks. State governments continue to adapt
to address terrorism challenges. For example, in 2004 the
Maharashtra state police established a specialist
anti-terrorism squad that includes a Quick Reaction Team.
This unit was bolstered by an increase in community policing
and traditional police information gathering methods. A
similar police unit in J&K that met with success in tackling
terrorist networks in the Kashmir Valley was disbanded after
the population complained of excesses.

Forensics is weak in India -- only two DNA labs service the
entire country. Few police officers outside major cities are
trained in safeguarding and exploiting electronic data,
although this capacity is expanding under indigenous
cybersecurity training and cooperative training with US
government agencies. As a consequence, terrorism
investigations and court cases tend to rely upon confessions,
many of which are obtained under duress if not beatings,
threats, or, in some cases, torture. These factors
contribute to cases lingering in the courts for years.
Public frustration with the courts, inability to swiftly
apply justice in terrorism cases has bred a climate that
tacitly sanctions "encounter killings" -- summary executions

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of suspected terrorists, staged to appear to have died in a
gunfight with security forces. Some security officers who
have experience in these operations have become openly known
and praised as "encounter specialists." There is no widely
accepted data on the magnitude of the problem of
extrajudicial killings, although the number of such deaths
has declined sharply in recent years following criticism from
Indian courts and the national Human Rights Commission.

Indian police are in 2005 demonstrated they are improving
their investigative techniques, however. For example, the
first law enforcement leads following the May 22 cinema
bombings, the July 5 attack on the Hindu temple in Ayodhya,
and the October 29 Diwali bombings were generated by
analyzing mobile telephone data cards, calling patterns, and
billing records. That said, Indian security services
generally lag behind terrorists, technology -- in one
instance, an Indian security officer told reporters "when
terrorists had two digit IED (improvised explosive device)
remotes, we had one digit jammers, and when they had three,
we had two." The use of Thuraya satellite phones marketed by
a UAE-based company and used by terrorists that organize
attacks from safe havens outside of Indian-administered
Kashmir has further complicated the security forces, task.

Some of India,s antiterrorism legislation has the potential
to be misused -- or has been misused -- to deprive suspects,
due process. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and
the Disturbed Areas Act remain in effect in Jammu and
Kashmir, Nagaland, Manipur, Assam, and parts of Tripura,
where active secessionist movements exist. The Disturbed
Areas Act gives police extraordinary powers of arrest and
detention, and the AFSPA provides search and arrest powers
without warrants and grants security forces immunity from
prosecution for acts committed under the law. The Public
Safety Act (PSA),which applies only in Jammu and Kashmir,
permits state authorities to detain persons without charge
and judicial review for up to 2 years. The PSA has been used
in the past to detain Kashmiri separatist leaders for short
periods of time, ranging from several hours to one day,
usually to prevent their participation in demonstrations,
funerals, or other public events.

The Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (ULPA) of 2004 is
India,s main counterterrorism legislation. It retains the
salient aspects of previous laws, and maintains India,s
compliance with UNSCR 1373. ULPA also expanded the legal
definition of terrorism to include extraterritorial acts, and
strengthened police wiretapping authority in terrorism cases.
ULPA also eliminated the ability of police to detain a
terrorist suspect for up to 180 days before filing charges.

ULPA criminalizes fundraising by terrorists and holding
property derived from or acquired through terrorist acts.
There has been no known instance where the GOI has declined
or failed to seize the assets of a known or suspected
terrorist group. ULPA also allows the government to seize
property derived from the proceeds of terrorism without a
conviction. There have as yet been no prosecutions or
convictions under ULPA since it has come into force.

The Prevention of Money Laundering Act, which became

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effective from July 1, 2005, provides the statutory basis for
India,s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU),an independent
entity within the Finance Ministry. The FIU,s mandate is to
collect and analyze suspicious and other transaction reports
received from financial institutions and banks, including
transactions related to terrorist financing. It will have
access to the records and databases of other government
agencies, including banks and financial institutions. The FIU
will be a purely administrative body, without regulatory or
criminal investigative responsibilities; it will report
suspicious cases to the appropriate law enforcement agency.
The FIU will begin operations in three phases, becoming fully
operational by December 2006. Standing up the FIU moves the
Indian government forward in joining the Financial Action
Task Force and the Egmont Group in 2006.

The Reserve Bank of India in November 2004 issued a set of
"Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering" guidelines for
banks and financial institutions, with implementation
beginning in December 2005.

In August 2005 the Indian government announced a new policy
on airplane hijackings that includes directing ground crews
to obstruct a hijacked plane from taking off and a clearance
procedure for authorizing the shooting down of a hijacked
plane in flight that might endanger civilians on the ground.
The policy stemmed from lessons learned after the hijacking
of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 in 1999.

The Indian government has an excellent record of protecting
its nuclear assets from terrorists, and is taking steps to
further improve the security of its strategic systems. In
May the Indian Parliament passed the Weapons of Mass
Destruction and Their Delivery Systems (Prohibition of
Unlawful Activities) Bill, which is designed to prevent the
leakage of WMDs, delivery systems, and associated
technologies to state and non-state actors, including
terrorists. The Indian government is in the final stages of
approving India,s participation in the Container Security
Initiative, which will upon activation enhance its
counter-proliferation capabilities.

New trends emerged in 2005 from terrorist groups operating in
India. The Indian government and military credit improved
tactics and a fence that runs along the Line of Control
(which separates the Indian and Pakistani sides of Kashmir)
for having reduced markedly the number of terrorists who
cross into Indian Kashmir and, as a consequence, the number
of attacks and fatalities in Jammu and Kashmir. However,
after the October 8 earthquake that reportedly killed scores
if not hundreds of Kashmir-based terrorists, the terrorists
launched a series of high-profile attacks across the degraded
frontier defenses in an effort to prove their continued
relevance. Indian experts assess the car bombs, grenade
attacks, and daytime assassinations and assassination
attempts on Kashmiri political leaders -- including current
and former state ministers -- were designed to signal that
the terrorist groups retained the ability to conduct
"spectacular" operations despite their reported losses. They
also assess the April attack on the bus depot for the
Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus was designed to inhibit the growing
Kashmiri enthusiasm for normalization of ties between Indian

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and Pakistani Kashmir.

Multiple-simultaneous terrorist attacks within New Delhi are,
like the high-risk attacks in Jammu and Kashmir, likely a
case of terrorist groups seeking to raise their profile. May
22 saw the nearly simultaneous bombings of two movie theaters
in New Delhi by a Sikh terrorist organization -- Babbar
Khalsa International -- that had been thought by many to be
defunct. The Indian government blamed Lashkar-e-Tayyiba for
the trio of explosions in crowded marketplaces and a public
bus on the eve of October 29 (the Hindu Diwali holiday). The
May attacks left one person dead and over 60 injured;
approximately 60 were killed and 150 injured in the Diwali
bombings.

The Naxalites launched two mass attacks in the second half of

2005. On June 23 approximately 500 Naxalites attacked an
Uttar Pradesh village, destroying buildings, capturing
weapons, and killing several local policemen. On November
13, an estimated 300 Naxalites attacked the Jehanabad Prison
in Bihar, killing 2 persons and freeing over 300 inmates.
Among the 698 inmates about 30 members of an upper caste
landowners, anti-Naxal group were abducted.

In the Northeast, the most lethal terrorist group, ULFA, has
occasionally resorted to bomb blasts. It usually tries
minimizing the loss of life during attacks -- mostly on
economic installations -- in a bid to retain support from the
local population.

End text.


2. (U) Embassy POC is Poloff Howard Madnick: 011-2419-8657,
madnickhj@state.gov (unclassified),madnickhj@state.sgov.gov
(classified).
MULFORD