ISI officers gave orders to 26/11 handlers, says Abu Hamza: Top 10 developments

Abu Hamza has allegedly confessed that he was in a control room in Karachi during the 26/11 attacks, and that he served as one of six handlers who instructed the ten terrorists in Mumbai on how to execute the attacks at different landmarks.    

He has allegedly said that officers from Pakistan's ISI were also in this control room. He however said LeT chief Hafiz Sayeed was not in the Karachi control room.  

Hamza was deported by Saudi Arabia earlier this month. He was being tracked by India's Intelligence Bureau and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for more than a year, say sources.

Abu Hamza was arrested by police in Saudi Arabia last year in connection with a forgery case. He had spent around a year in the jail when US  investigating agencies learnt of his arrest. As soon as they were able to confirm his identity as one of the handlers involved in the 26/11 operation, Indian intelligence agencies were roped in.  Indian intelligence officials collected DNA samples from his family members in Beed and sent samples to Saudi Arabia. They matched with Hamza's. That helped persuade Saudi Arabia to hand him over.

Pakistan had reportedly been pressuring Saudi Arabia against deporting Hamza to India. Sources say that Pakistan was worried that once India had access to the handler, it would be able to irrefutably establish how Pakistani "state actors" - possibly from the ISI and the country's army - were linked to 26/11.

He has allegedly said that after Ajmal Kasab was caught alive during the 26/11 attacks (the other nine terrorists in Mumbai were killed), the handlers who had worked the phones to them were asked to leave Pakistan immediately.  He travelled to Saudi Arabia on a Pakistani passport.

Hamza, 31, is from the Beed district in Maharashtra. He was originally a member of the Indian Mujahideen (IM), an Indian terror group, and was close to its founder, Riyaz Bhatkal. He escaped to Pakistan around 2006, by which time he was wanted for a massive arms haul in Aurangabad - AK47s and huge quantities of the explosive RDX were discovered as part of a major attack planned by the Lashkar.

In 2010, a suspected Lashkar terrorist named Lal Baba Mohammed Sheikh was arrested by the NIA after the German Bakery was bombed in Pune; 17 people were killed. This arrested terrorist told interrogators that Hamza had played a part in the Pune terror attack. He listened to the 26/11 recordings of the phone conversations between the Pakistani terrorists in Mumbai and their six handlers in Pakistan, and identified Abu Hamza's voice. He said this man was Zabiuddin Ansari from Beed. Indian intel then began tracking Hamza.

He was the Indian hand in 26/11, they suspected - a man who used Hindi terms like prashasan and yuvak in his conversations, Hindi words that suggested he was from India. Of the ten terrorists who executed 26/11, Ajmal Kasab alone was captured alive. He told a court that Hamza had taught his group Hindi before they set sail for Mumbai from Karachi.

Hamza, currently in a Delhi jail, is in the custody of the Delhi Police. He will stay there till July 5. The Mumbai Police wants to question him about the 2006 attacks on local trains in Mumbai, in which 180 people were killed. It moved the Tis Hazari court in Delhi today seeking his custody. The Bangalore Police wants to interrogate him about his alleged role in a bomb blast outside Chinnaswamy Stadium during a cricket match in 2010. The National Investigation Agency which is handling the 26/11 case, also wants to interrogate him.