India-Israel track Sajid Mir as Lashkar gives final touches to Karachi Project

The biggest mystery of the 26/11 attack is Sajid Mir or Sajeed Majeed. After the attack of 26/11 there was nothing known about him and it was over the next year or so that his name surfaced during the interrogation of David Headley.

Branded as an international terrorist and the man who handled David Headley, Sajid Mir the 1976 born operative according to the intelligence provided to India by the Mossad he is holed up in Murdike which is situated near Lahore.

What is the mysterious Mir doing in Murdike:

Murdike is an extremely strategic location for Mir. His home is the near the Ganda Nala lane in Lahore Pakistan which is very close to Murdike which also happens to be one of the main base camps of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, the outfit he works for.

He is a key player for the Lashkar and today his importance for them is immense as they prepare to launch the Karachi Project which they have been working for some time now.

From the Murdike camp, the Lashkar plans and launches all its operations and Mir is very much out there coordinating with the Lashkar’s international contacts to help launch the Karachi attack. Incidentally he is the one who even identified and handled David Headley who again has the brand of an international terrorist.

In Murdike since July 2014:

After the 26/11 attack he was told to lie low for a long time. He was in fact in Lahore all the time at his home. The fact that Paksitan even denies the existence of such a man and terms the allegations by India as a myth helped their cause even further.

No amount of surveillance done by the Indian agencies was able to track this man down.

However it was the Mossad agents who had provided India with ample information and his movement and it was found that he had moved into the Murdike camp of the Lashkar. Going by what the Israelis have filed before the Eastern District Court of New York in the month of October 2014 it becomes all the more clear that he is located in Murdike.

Mir never moved out of Paksitan:

After the attacks of 26/11, the ISI had told him to lie low. Ideally the ISI moves its operatives to the Gulf when the heat is too high on their operatives. However in the case of Mir they did not do so. The arrests of Abu Jundal the Hindi tutor of the ten terrorists from the Gulf made the ISI think twice before sending its operatives there.

Moreover in the case of Jundal even the Pakistanis had staked a claim on him, but the Indians managed to win that battle and extradite him.

This is a clear indication that he was never moved out of Pakistan even once. The ISI does not mind if operatives of such importance take a salary from them for not doing work for years together. They tend to activate such terrorists for specific jobs once in five to ten years and this time he is active in connection with the Karachi project.

Karachi Project:

According to the testimony of Headley the Karachi Project was planned to launch operations in India using the home grown terrorists. This was the brain child of the ISI.

However the ISI realized that that the world had got wind of the project that they were planning. They decided to make a strategic move in which they moved their main officer Major Hashim officially into the Lashkar. This move meant that during the planning and execution stages the ISI would not be under the radar of the international agencies.

While the ISI backs the Karachi Project completely, it is today headed by Major Hashim and Sajid Mir. In addition to this they also have the support of Abu Yakoob who is the head of the naval wing of the Lashkar.

Mir has been handed out a major responsibility in this project. He recruits youth from Indian states such as Gujarat and Maharashtra and brings them into Pakistan before sending them back to India. The intent is to train these youth and keep them ready when they decided to execute the Karachi Project in full.

The transition that Mir brought about:

Mir is the one who gave the Lashkar a new dimension. In fact he always told Hafiz Saeed that for the Lashkar to grow it should grown out of the Kashmir obsession and focus on the other parts of India as well.

He was a passionate Jihadi who had worked for several years in Saudi Arabia and after making his money he returned to Paksitan.

Born and brought up in a middle class Punjabi home in Lahore, he returned to Pakistan and set up a textile business. He later married the daughter of a retired army officer in Pakistan and has two sons today.

His major international assignment before David Headley was with French operative Willie Brigitte. Mir had roped him in and trained him in Pakistan to undertake combat.

The reason why David Headley returned to India:

David Headley as we all know had come to India to carry out a reconnaissance ahead of the 26/11attack. The audacity with which Headley operated can be seen in the manner that he decided to come back to India even after the attack.

Officers of the NIA who had probed Headley who continue to share and gather information with several other agencies say that after the 26/11 attack, the ISI had already started chalking out the Karachi Project. They realized that they needed to get a new team ready and also get more information on potential targets in India.

Headley seemed to be the obvious choice and none had any information on him at least in India. The agencies say that he has made over 6 visits to India and there was just one after the attack in which he surveyed targets for the Karachi Project.

The final Headley visit was directed by Mir:

Going by the various accounts and even Headley’s testimony it appears as though the Karachi Project was planned along with the 26/11 attack. According to Saroj Kumar Rath the author of the most insightful book, “Fragile Frontiers: The Secret History of Mumbai Terror Attacks, “ Headley was managed always by Mir. He is the one who had directed all his visits to India and that included the one after the attack as well.