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 2010s
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.
March 29, 2010
Russia Moscow Subway Bombings
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.
July 11, 2010
Uganda World Cup Bombings
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:
And the best of men have promised and they have delivered. . . . Blessed and exalted among men—(taking) full responsibility. . . . We wage war against the six thousand collaborators; they have received their response. We are behind the attack because we are at war with them. . . . We had given warning to the Ugandans to refrain from their involvement in our country. We spoke to the leaders and we spoke to the people and they never listened to us. May Allah accept these martyrs who carried out the blessed operation and exploded themselves in the middle of the infidels.
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.”
During the previous Friday’s prayers, al-Shabaab commander Sheikh Muktar Robow had called for attacks in Uganda and Burundi, which contribute troops to the African Union force in Mogadishu. On July 13, 2010, al-Shabaab spokesman Yonis said the bombings involved planted explosives, not suicide bombers.
By July 14, 2010, authorities had arrested six people, including four foreigners, among them two Somalis. Security officials suggested that the local Muslim extremist group Allied Democratic Forces assisted the terrorists. Police said they are based in the mountains near the Democratic Republic of the Congo. By July 18, 2010, 20 people were in custody, including citizens of Uganda, Somalia, and Ethiopia. Some were caught near the borders with Sudan and Rwanda while trying to flee the country.
On August 11, 2010, Kenyan authorities announced that they had sent six suspects to Uganda and released a seventh. They included suspected al-Shabaab members Idris Magondu, a Nairobi driver, and Hussein Hassan Agade and Mohammed Adan Abdow, both street vendors, Agade in Nairobi and Abdow in Tawa. Kenyan police said Abdow, a Kenyan of Somali origin, had made satellite phone calls to al-Shabaab members.
Suspect Salmin Mohammed Khamis, 34, had been released on bail on August 9, 2010. He was accused of harboring some of the suspects. He had been acquitted in the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa. In 2003, he confessed to a failed plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.
On September 15, 2010, Kampala authorities arrested Omar Awadh Omar (alias Abu Sahal), a Kenyan and deputy commander of al Qaeda in the region, and Agade, one of his aides, in connection with the attack. The Uganda website New Vision said the duo were planning a follow-up attack. Omar was a key logistics and intelligence link to al-Shabaab and deputy of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed. Authorities said Mohammed was behind the August 7, 1998, bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.
By October 10, 2010, Ugandan authorities had detained 36 suspects from seven countries—Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan. One individual admitted being recruited and trained by al Qaeda. The suspects included businessmen, university students, and leaders of small mosques. Among those detained was al-Amin Kimathi, an activist with the Muslim Human Rights Forum in Nairobi.
Police said suspect Haruna Luyima allegedly was to set off a fourth bomb at a Kampala dance club but changed his mind; he told a press conference in August 2010 that he did not want to hurt innocent people. He claimed he had been recruited into the plot by his elder brother, Isa Luyima. Mohamood Mugisha told police he was given $4,000 by the alShabaab plotters to help plan the attacks, rent a house in Uganda, and drive the bombs in from Somalia via Kenya.
The case remains open.
January 16, 2013
Algerian Gas Plant Takeover
Overview: In 2012, a Tuareg rebellion overthrew government authority in northern Mali. Government troops, who had just wrested control of the capital from an ineffective government, were powerless to stop the rebellion, which was soon hijacked by a confederation of Islamist groups, including al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The Islamists quickly instituted an especially harsh interpretation of sharia, amputating appendages and destroying Timbuktu shrines. North African terrorists flocked to northern Mali in hopes of aiding the creation of a regional caliphate. While West African nations indicated willingness to send troops to quell the rebellion, their ability to field a competent military force under UN blessing and Economic Community of West African States control was months away.
When the I
slamists began moving south, threatening to take over the rest of Mali, France sent more than 2,000 ground troops and attack aircraft to the country, bombarding Islamist locations. In response, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who had split with AQIM a few weeks earlier to create his own Islamist terrorist group, conducted the largest terrorist attack in the region in years. Terrorists seized Western hostages to pressure the French to end the incursion. Belmokhtar, whose faction had made millions of dollars since 2003 by kidnapping Westerners and smuggling cigarettes (giving him the nickname Marlboro Man), suddenly received worldwide attention.
The Algerian government, having experienced an exceptionally bloody terrorist campaign in the 1990s, rejected negotiations and went on the offensive, killing and capturing all of the terrorists. Dozens of hostages died during the battle. Later determination that some of the attack squad were involved in the September 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four American diplomats, including the U.S. ambassador, further heightened concern about growth of this regional AQIM group.
Incident: On January 16, 2013, at 5:00 A.M., at least 32 radical Islamists protesting Algerian support for the French incursion into Mali attacked the country’s third largest natural gas pumping station and employee barracks in the south, a remote facility 1,000 miles away from the capital city, killing 2 people and taking at least 573 Algerian and 132 foreign hostages, including 41 Westerners. The facility employs 790 people, including 134 foreigners from 26 countries.
As Algerian security forces escorted Westerners to the Ain Menas Airport, the gunmen, dressed in fatigues and wearing turbans, arrived in three unmarked trucks and attacked the bus. Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal later said:
The 50 Worst Terrorist Attacks Page 26
