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PRESS TRUST OF INDIA
LONDON, OCT 4: Osama Bin Laden, alleged mastermind in the Kenyan bomb blasts, has asked his Afghan and Arab terrorists to gather in Kashmir for a major terrorist offensive in the Valley and beyond, The Sunday Times reported.
As part of the terror offensive, hundreds of Afghan battle-hardened elite Islamic mercenaries have crossed the Pir Panjal mountains from Pakistan into Kashmir with clear orders to bring terror to Kashmir and beyond in India, the paper reported.
Laden is running the new mercernary campaign in Kashmir through Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin, which changed its label recently from Harkat-ul-Ansar, after coming up in the American list of banned terrorist organisations, the paper said.
Other British media reports said, acutely embarrassed by recent ``near international exposure'' of its running terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan itself, the Pakistan army high command, through its run and controlled Taliban militia, had directed Laden to divert himself from threats to America andmoderate Arab governments to concentrate his private Islamic army in Kashmir for a ``decisive summer terror campaign and it's rapid spread beyond into other regions in India''.
The reports of Pakistani army Intelligence orders to Laden assume significance in the wake of recent western reports of foreign Islamic mercenaries having taken control of militancy in Kashmir, with most of the Kashmiri groups giving up the path of violence.
Ghulam, a Afghan mercenary, told the Times that he received a payment of 700 pound sterling (about Rs 50,000) in Afghanistan and was made to sign a two-year contract alongwith two other mercenaries to fight Indian security forces in Kashmir for the payment of 5,600 pound sterling.
``We were told to leave the Al Badr camps before the American attack and were given instructions about who to contact to cross from Pakistan into India in Kashmir''.
Ghulam described Laden as ``our father, who has sent his brothers from Afghanistan to wage jehad in Kashmir.'' Hesaid, on arrival in Kashmir, they had been asked to keep Kashmir on the boil by selecting soft targets such as civilians and few foreign tourists who still visited the Valley.The Times said bonus payments were promised to mercenaries, who generate international headlines with an abduction or by killing top politicians or senior Indian army officers. It said Laden's men had also been instructed to establish contacts with other Islamic cells established in states throughout India in preparation for a terror campaign.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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