Mumbai Attacks

The alleged gunman captured in last month's Mumbai attacks had originally intended to seize hostages and outline demands in a series of dramatic calls to the media, according to his confession obtained Saturday. Ajmal Amir Kasab said he and his partner, who massacred dozens of people in the city's main train terminus, had planned a rooftop standoff, but abandoned the plan because they couldn't find a suitable building, the statement to police says.

Pawan Kumar is looking for a job. Not just any job; he wants to be India's newest hangman. Kumar, 50, an apparel salesman from a family of executioners, says it's in his DNA, demonstrating with well-callused hands how to slide a hood over a condemned person's head, grease the noose and wrench the lever so the floor parts like a wave. He acknowledges that he's never performed a hanging, India's preferred execution method, but says he's witnessed several and practiced using sandbags.

Pakistan on Tuesday forcefully denied a suggestion by India's prime minister that official Pakistani agencies were involved in November's attacks in the city of Mumbai and said that leveling such accusations posed "grave risks" to the region. With this latest exchange of sharp words, tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors appeared to be increasing anew.

India's home minister said Thursday that it was too early to blame any particular militant group or individual for the deadly blasts that struck Mumbai at rush hour a day earlier, but that the coordinated attack was the work of terrorists. He also defended the intelligence services' record in the run-up to the three explosions, adding that they had no information that an attack was coming. "Whoever planned this attack worked in a very, very clandestine manner," Palaniappan Chidambaram told reporters Thursday morning.

Months before a team of terrorists killed about 170 people in coordinated attacks in Mumbai, India, a Chicago man was conducting surveillance of the hotels and other locations that would come under assault, prosecutors said Monday. David Coleman Headley was charged by federal authorities with conducting surveillance that helped plan the November 2008 attacks. Prosecutors say Headley, a Pakistani American, spent more than two years visiting locations including the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel that was stormed by gunmen.

Authorities on Wednesday filed charges of murder and "waging war" on India against who they say is the lone known surviving gunman in the Mumbai attacks, which killed more than 170 people in November. If convicted, 21-year-old Ajmal Amir Kasab, dubbed the "smiling assassin" by Indian media for the facial expression seen on closed-circuit video during the attack on the Mumbai railway station, could face the death penalty.

Pakistan's high court ruled Tuesday that authorities did not have enough evidence to arrest a firebrand Islamic cleric suspected of masterminding the deadly attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai. The ruling is likely to anger India's government at a time when the two rival countries seek a thaw in relations. Hafiz Saeed founded Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani militant group blamed for the string of assaults on luxury hotels, a railway station and other targets in Mumbai that killed 166 people in 2008.

A court found two more men guilty of playing a part in India's deadliest terrorist attack, a string of bombings that killed 257 people in Mumbai in 1993. Judge Pramod Kode found Asgar Mukadam and Shah Nawaz Qureshi guilty of planting a car bomb at a movie theater in central Mumbai, formerly Bombay, that killed 10 people and wounded 37. They could face the death penalty.

Lashkar-e-Taiba, the self-styled "Army of the Pure," has left its footprints in the snows of Kashmir, the back alleys of Lahore and Karachi, the harsh terrain along the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier -- and now, investigators say, in Mumbai, India, the scene of last week's horrific rampage by gunmen. The growing case against the Pakistan-based militant organization speaks directly to a doubt that has plagued U.S.-Pakistani relations since the two countries became allies after the Sept.

Auditioning in December for the role of a Bollywood villain, Rajan Verma was asked to act like a man attacking a train or a building. He clutched a toy gun and spewed out what he hoped sounded like a venomous diatribe. Verma, 28, had no idea what the movie was about. But when the casting director handed him a black T-shirt, beige cargo pants, a blue backpack and a replica of an AK-47 assault rifle, he knew instantly.

One of the first people President Obama met after checking in Saturday to the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower here was Karambir Singh Kang, the hotel's manager. Kang lost his wife, Niti, and their two sons in the terrorist attack on the hotel and other sites in Mumbai two years ago, but then went on to help save others. Obama made the refurbished hotel the first stop of his two-week trip to Asia in order to convey a message to plotters of that attack and others. "In our determination to give our people a future of security and prosperity," he said, "the United States and India stand united.

President Obama visited the site of the 2008 terrorist attacks here Saturday, making it the first stop of his two-week trip to Asia in order to convey a message to plotters of that attack and others. "In our determination to give our people a future of security and prosperity," he said, "the United States and India stand united. " Obama spoke with a group of hotel employees and other survivors gathered in a hotel courtyard shortly after checking into the hotel. He is the first foreign head of state to stay at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel since the attacks, an event known in India by the shorthand 26/11.

The wife of a U.S. citizen who has admitted scouting targets for the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks had provided details to federal agents about the man's ties to Pakistani militant groups three years earlier, but the FBI determined the information was insufficient to legally justify opening an investigation, a federal official said. The man, David Coleman Headley, was briefly arrested in New York City in 2005 after a domestic dispute, and his wife told the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force about his political leanings and associations, the official said.

A senior Indian official has accused Pakistan's powerful spy agency of planning and carrying out the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, the toughest and most direct allegation by the Indian government against its neighbor over the assault that killed 166 people. The allegation of Inter-Services Intelligence agency involvement, published Wednesday in the Indian Express newspaper, comes a day before the foreign ministers of the nuclear-armed rivals are scheduled to meet in Islamabad in a bid to ease suspicion stemming from the attack.

Pakistan's high court ruled Tuesday that authorities did not have enough evidence to arrest a firebrand Islamic cleric suspected of masterminding the deadly attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai. The ruling is likely to anger India's government at a time when the two rival countries seek a thaw in relations. Hafiz Saeed founded Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani militant group blamed for the string of assaults on luxury hotels, a railway station and other targets in Mumbai that killed 166 people in 2008.

The lone surviving gunman in the 2008 attack on Mumbai that killed 166 people and terrified a nation was given the death penalty Thursday. The sentencing of Pakistani Mohammed Ajmal Kasab to hang for murder, conspiracy and waging war against the state followed his conviction Monday on all 86 counts against him. Kasab was one of 10 men reportedly trained in Pakistan who traveled to Mumbai by water in late November of that year, slipped ashore...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday urged Pakistan and India to cooperate with "resolve and urgency " to catch and prosecute those behind last week's terrorist attacks in Mumbai that killed more than 170 people and wounded hundreds.

The lone surviving member of the November 2008 attack in Mumbai that killed 166 people was convicted Monday on 86 counts, including murder, conspiracy and waging war against India, while two alleged Indian accomplices were acquitted. The guilty verdict against Pakistan national Ajmal Amir Kasab, 22, was expected. Kasab was seen by several witnesses and recorded on closed-circuit video attacking the Mumbai railway station with a serene smirk on his face that prompted Indian media to dub him the "smiling assassin."

The lone surviving member of the November 2008 attack in Mumbai that killed 166 people was convicted Monday on 86 counts, including murder, conspiracy and waging war against India, while two alleged Indian accomplices were acquitted. The guilty verdict against Pakistan national Ajmal Amir Kasab, 22, was expected. Kasab was seen by several witnesses and recorded on closed-circuit video attacking the Mumbai railway station with a serene smirk that prompted Indian media to dub him the "smiling assassin."