The Mind of a Terrorist

by Kaare Sørensen

  The men in that room were able to maintain contact with the young attackers by means of an advanced IP telephony system that could, among other things, route the calls from India through New Jersey and then to Pakistan. They hardly cared whether they left digital tracks, so long as the killings would continue without interference from the authorities. And if the IP system failed, the team in Mumbai was equipped with a number of satellite telephones. Even the cell phones of several of the hostages were used to connect with the control room during the operation.

  Over the telephones, the young men in Mumbai were reminded again and again that they were on a holy mission, and that Allah would honor their courage with all kinds of beautiful women in Paradise. They received advice with regard to food, survival, and sleep.

  “If you get tired, give each other massages,” came the word from the control room.

  After those first hours, it was time to take stock of the situation. The team had lost two of the original ten men in Mumbai: one had been killed, and one had been taken prisoner.

  Two were in the Jewish center in Nariman House with two female hostages. Two had taken hostages in the Oberoi-Trident Hotel. And four were gathered at the enormous Taj Hotel, where they continued setting fire to the rooms.

  All eight were still heavily armed. And it was now clear to all of them that they would be fighting to the death. No matter what they would claim in telephone interviews with TV stations in the hours to come, there would be no real talk of surrender. Never.

  Jesper Bornak thought the attack would undoubtedly make the evening news in Denmark. Everyone would hear about it then. He called Gitte after midnight on Thursday, Indian time. For the first time, he realized that he was on the verge of losing control over the situation and himself.

  “Hi, dear, don’t worry, but there’s been a terrorist attack here. There have been many deaths,” said Jesper.

  Gitte was at home in Hornbæk with their almost two-year-old daughter, an infant boy of two and a half months, and Jesper’s mother. Neither Gitte nor Jesper’s mother had heard about the attack in Mumbai.

  “I’m almost to safety. We’re trying to find a place where we can stay. I want to save some battery power, so I’ll text you later. I love you,” said Jesper.

  A bald man in a white coat stopped Jesper on the street. He was a journalist from the Asia Times newspaper and had an office nearby with clean water, a sofa, and chocolate bars.

  “You can wait there until you can make it out of the city,” said the man.

  In the little office, they watched IBN, the Indian CNN, where the attack was called a “Mumbai invasion” on the crawl at the bottom of the screen. Jesper saw it more as war.

  But an entirely different war than the one he had taken part in as a UN soldier, thirteen years earlier.

  “Tonight was more terrifying because I had no gun to defend myself. Soldiers firing on soldiers in a war is easier to understand than civilians firing at other civilians,” said Jesper to the Asia Times journalist.

  The journalist stayed awake all night in order to write his story for the paper.

  “When I met Thomas, Rita, and Jesper near the Air India building facing the Arabian Sea, Marine Drive had turned into a Hollywood disaster movie set: ambulances, police vehicles, satellite TV vans, trucks of heavily armed soldiers rumbling into the zone, and reporters screaming into their cell phones. Thomas and Rita were desperately trying to contact three missing crew members, not yet sure whether one of them had escaped alive out of the Leopold Café,” wrote the journalist in his article.

  Jesper had but one wish: to return home. Now.

  In Nariman House, one of the hostages, the fifty-year-old Mexican Norma Shvarzblat Rabinovich, had called the Israeli embassy in India to relay some demands on behalf of the hostage takers. Norma picked up another handset to speak with the anonymous men in Karachi.

  “I was talking to the consulate just a few seconds ago, and they are making the phone call. They said to leave the line free. They are calling the prime minister and the army in India from the embassy in Delhi,” she said.

  Norma had been staying at the Jewish center in India for the past two months. She had a plane ticket to Israel for just a few days later, December 1, 2008, where she was to celebrate her son’s eighteenth birthday.

  From Pakistan, the terrorist leaders tried to calm her down. They promised her that she would most likely survive.

  Sajid Mir was speaking. He spoke slowly:

  “Don’t worry, Norma. Just sit back and relax and don’t worry, and just wait for them to contact. Okay?”

  From the recordings of the call, it is clear that Norma was crying.

  “And save your energy for good days. If they make contact right now, maybe you’re gonna celebrate your Sabbath with your family,” said Sajid Mir, who continued to identify himself as Wasi.

  Next, he got one of the young terrorists on the line.

  “The Indian authorities will call you on this number and ask what you want. Just say, release our guy to us with his weapons within half an hour.”

  The terrorist was also clearly instructed not to reveal that they had already killed four of the hostages in the Jewish center—among others, the twenty-eight-year-old Bentzion Kruman from Israel.

  “You mustn’t say you’ll release the two hostages. You must say that you’ll release all the hostages.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you tell them they can negotiate with us.”

  At Oberoi-Trident, some hostages were let go.

  They ran out to freedom and were escorted away by the Indian authorities, who wanted to make sure that none of the released hostages were actually terrorists trying to leave the hotel disguised as victims.

  But the majority of the people at the hotel continued to try to barricade their doors with chairs, desks, and suitcases and then hide in closets, under beds, or in bathrooms while clutching their cell phones.

  Meanwhile, several explosions went off. The fourth floor was a sea of flames.

  Fahadullah’s phone rang. Sajid Mir, from the control room in Pakistan, attempted to spur on the two terrorists to fight to the last bullet: “The manner of your death will instill fear in the unbelievers. This is a battle between Islam and the unbelievers. Keep looking for a place to die. Keep moving,” said Sajid Mir.

  “Inshallah,” replied Fahadullah.

  “You’re very close to heaven now. One way or another, we’ve all got to go there. You will be remembered for what you’ve done here. Fight till the end. Stretch it out as long as possible.”

  Jesper Bornak had been awake for more than an entire day.

  He had made it to the Hyatt Hotel at the airport along with the Lufthansa crew, when a man in a suit and a yellow security vest came up to him. “Denmark” was written on the back.

  “Hello, Jesper. You look like someone who could really use a beer,” said the Danish consul, patting Jesper on the shoulder.

  Jesper collapsed. He knew he was lucky to be alive, and the pictures still imprinted his retinas were difficult to process. Even for a former soldier.

  For the first time, Jesper realized that his pants were soaked in blood. He had noticed they were wet after the attack at the Leopold Café, but at first thought it was coffee. Now he saw that his dark-blue jeans were covered with large, dark-red splotches.

  One of the young women from the Lufthansa crew had blood in her hair, too, but none of the crew had been struck by bullets. All of them had survived the Leopold Café attack.

  The consul took Jesper down to a market to have a photo taken for a temporary passport and to buy some clothes, but all he could get were some pants. He thanked the consul for his help, they exchanged numbers, and Jesper returned to the airport hotel. He called Gitte again.

  “I’m safe,” he said, crying.

  The plan was for Jesper to fly to Europe with the Lufthansa crew, but it turned out to be complicated.

  “You can’t leave if your passport doesn’t have
a stamp showing you arrived,” said the immigration officers at the airport. Jesper tried a story about being the boyfriend of the stewardess Desiree, but the officers didn’t buy it.

  “You’ll have to return to your hotel and wait,” came their reply. It apparently meant nothing to them that the hotel was on fire.

  A close friend of one of the Lufthansa crew members was apparently dead, after having jumped out of a window during the attack. The immigration officers were of no help here, either:

  “Where is your passport? Can you remember your passport number?” they asked the distraught woman, who had fled after the attack.

  Jesper tried calling the Danish consul, but his cell phone’s battery finally died. Then he tried using one of the immigration officers’ phones, and when he succeeded reaching the consulate handed the handset to an officer. Jesper heard him say, “Yes, sir,” about ten times to the consul. With that, Jesper was allowed through the security checkpoint.

  On the flight to Europe, they all talked about what had happened that evening. What they had seen, what they had thought. A smoking section was created in the back of the plane, where they drank some alcohol and tried to sleep. It was no use. Nor when Jesper made it back home to Denmark was he able to distance himself from the events. The newspaper Ekstra Bladet had seen the story on Asia Times Online about the Dane who was caught up in the Mumbai terrorist attack, and now it announced on its front page: DANE FACE TO FACE WITH TERRORISTS: JESPER CHEATED DEATH.

  Jesper was shaken and completely wiped out. But he didn’t want his children to see him like that. He took a strong sleeping pill and shut himself in for the first few days.

  Nobody called Nariman House, either from the Israeli embassy in New Delhi or from the government of Israel, in order to negotiate directly with the hostage takers. It was Thursday evening. Twenty-four hours had gone by, and the hostage takers, Akasha and Umar, spent the time shooting at random out the windows.

  “All citizens are to stay indoors,” came the warning from the Indian authorities.

  Telephone recordings reveal that the terrorist leaders in Pakistan were uncertain as to their next steps in Nariman House.

  “Do you want them to keep the hostages or kill them?” asked Sajid Mir of an unknown man in the background in the control room.

  Sajid then turned back to the terrorists in India.

  “Listen,” he said. “Just shoot them now. Get rid of them. Because you could come under fire at any time, and you’ll only end up leaving them behind.”

  “Inshallah … Everything’s quiet here for now,” said Akasha, hesitating. It was clear that he didn’t care for the situation.

  “Shoot them in the back of the head.”

  “Sure. Just as soon as we come under fire.”

  “No. Don’t wait any longer. You never know when you might come under attack. Just make sure you don’t get hit by a ricochet when you do it.”

  “Inshallah.”

  “I’ll stay on the line.”

  There was silence for fifteen seconds. Not a single gunshot to be heard.

  “Do it. Do it. I’m listening. Do it!”

  “What, shoot them?”

  “Yes, do it. Sit them up and shoot them in the back of the head.”

  “The thing is, Umer is asleep. He hasn’t been feeling too well.”

  A short pause.

  “I’ll call you back in half an hour. You can do it then.”

  A short time later, the two spoke again. Sajid Mir was angry and spoke harshly. He wanted the hostages killed immediately.

  “Stand the women up in a doorway so that when the bullet goes through their heads it then goes outside, instead of ricocheting back into your room.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do one of them now, in the name of God. You’ve tied them up, right?”

  “Yeah, I’ll untie their feet.”

  “Just stand them up. If they’re tied up, leave them tied up.”

  Akasha complained again. He didn’t particularly want to kill the two women in the same room he and Umer were in.

  “It’ll only take two shots. Do it in the room where you are now.”

  “All right, yes,” Akasha replied, reluctantly.

  “Do it. Shoot them and shove them over to one side of the room.”

  From the recordings, it’s apparent that Akasha moved something around. For seven minutes, it was almost completely silent. Sajid Mir called out several times for Akasha without a response. The call was then disconnected.

  Ten minutes later, they were connected again.

  “Have you done the job yet or not?”

  “We were just waiting for you to call back, so we could do it while you’re on the phone.”

  “Do it, in God’s name,” said Sajid impatiently.

  “Just a sec … hold the line …”

  “In God’s name.”

  The roar of a machine gun could be heard from Nariman House. There were no screams.

  “Hello?”

  “That was one of them, right?”

  “Both,” said Akasha softly.

  On the eighteenth floor of the Oberoi-Trident, late on Thursday, the special forces assault reached Fahadullah and Rahman. At this point, the two had killed at least thirty-five at the hotel. The sprinklers were going full blast.

  “How are you, my brother, Fahadullah?” asked Sajid Mir by telephone from Karachi.

  “Praise God. Brother Abdul Rahman has passed away.”

  “Really? Is he near you?”

  “Yeah, he’s near me.”

  “May God accept his martyrdom.”

  “The room is on fire, it’s being shown on the TV. I’m sitting in the bathroom.”

  In the background, there was a large explosion. The connection was lost as the special forces approached. Sajid Mir called back a little bit later. Fahadullah was still in the bathroom.

  “Don’t let them arrest you. Don’t let them knock you out with a stun grenade. That would be very damaging. Fire one of your magazines, then grab the other one and move out. The success of your mission depends on your getting shot. God awaits you in heaven.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “God is waiting for you. Stay on the line and keep the phone in your pocket. We like to know what’s going on.”

  Several shots and the sound of an alarm could be heard on the crackling connection.

  “Fahadullah? Fahadullah?”

  There was no reply.

  The mission was nearing its end.

  The leaders in Karachi had decided this. Several hundred civilians, according to the media, had already been killed; images of the burning buildings were broadcast for the third straight day on international TV, and the captured terrorist Kasab couldn’t be rescued.

  Now it was all about making sure that neither of the two remaining terrorists was captured alive. Both of them had to die.

  “Okay, so the thing is, Brother Akasha … you’ve run out of water and you’re tired. They know this too. They’re hoping to arrest you once you’re weak from hunger and thirst,” came the message from Karachi to one of the two terrorists in Nariman House, shortly after midnight on Friday night. “It’s Friday today, so it’s a good day to finish it.”

  It wasn’t long before his wish was fulfilled.

  Indian special forces stormed Nariman House while TV stations broadcast live images of the helicopter that flew over the building, dropped five soldiers, and disappeared, all in under ninety seconds. It was 7:15 a.m. on Friday when Akasha spoke with Sajid Mir once again.

  “Yes, I think there’s a helicopter on the roof. Shoot, shoot! They’ve opened fire. They’ve opened fire. Umer, take cover! Take cover! They’re firing into our room, into our room!” said the voice on the line.

  Later, the men spoke with each other, most likely for the last time.

  “I’ve been shot. I’ve been shot. Pray for me.”

  “Oh God. Where have you been hit?”

  “My arm. And one in my leg.” />
  “May God protect you. Did you hit any of them?”

  “Yeah, we shot a commando. Pray that God will accept my martyrdom.”

  “Praise God, praise God. God will protect you.”

  The attack in Mumbai was one of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in recent history, surpassed only by the attacks in New York and Washington, DC, on September 11, 2001, and the attack in Madrid in 2004.

  The 166 dead in Mumbai were primarily Indians, but there were also victims from the United States, Germany, Australia, Canada, Israel, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Cyprus, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, Mauritania, Mexico, Singapore, and Thailand.

  Throughout the world, memorial services and ceremonies were held, and state and government leaders took part in funerals in many countries. In Israel, the couple Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg from the Jewish center in Mumbai were remembered in Jerusalem, where President Shimon Peres, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu were among the more than 15,000 who turned out.

  “I vow that we will avenge the deaths of Gabi and Rivki. But not with AK-47s, not with grenades and tanks. We will take revenge in a different way. We will add light. We will add good deeds,” said Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky.

  During the funeral, the couple’s two-year-old son could be heard again and again, screaming, “Ima! Ima! Ima!”—Hebrew for “mother.”

  In many ways, the Mumbai attack was unusual: no specific person was targeted. No single building had to be set aflame, and the five targets—two luxury hotels, a café known for its Western guests, the city’s central railway station, and the Jewish center—had but one thing in common: they were all places where it would be easy to kill a lot of Western tourists, Indian locals, and people in general.

  The goal was not a military one but a strategic one: to humiliate India, to make it fearful.

  At some point during the attack, twenty-five-year-old Akasha received a call at the Jewish center. From the control room in Pakistan, Lashkar leaders urged the young man to contact the Indian authorities or a TV station by phone.

  “Give the government an ultimatum. Tell them that this is just the trailer. Just wait till you see the rest of the movie. It’s a small example. A preview,” came the message from Karachi.