I was allowed to enter Karachi without visa,skip airport immigration: Yasin

Yasin has told interrogators that he spent about 50 days in Pakistan undergoing training to launch terror attacks and returned to Dubai in the same manner after his hosts stamped his passport with fake immigration stamps to show that he had entered and exited India.

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Yasin,who was arrested from the India-Nepal border late last month,has said that the IM’s operations chief Amir Reza Khan “instructed” him around December 2005 to go to Pakistan via Dubai for weapons training. Khan even gave him the code name of “Mustafa” for his stay in Pakistan.

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Having worked in Dubai earlier on a temporary visa,Yasin has said he arranged for a permanent work visa this time through the owner of a sports goods shop there. He worked there for a while before he was asked by another IM co-founder,Riyaz Bhatkal,to move to Pakistan for training.

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Yasin asked his employer for 15 days’ leave and told him as well as his father,who was also in Dubai,that he had to go to China on work.

He bought tickets to fly on Pakistan International Airlines from Dubai to Mumbai via Karachi and informed Riyaz about his travel plans through an online “messenger”.

“I boarded the plane in Dubai. As the plane landed in Karachi,a person (seemed like airport staff) entered the cabin with a placard in his hand with ‘Mustafa’ written on it,” Yasin has said.

“When I saw the placard,I raised my hand. He instructed me to follow him. He took my passport. He photocopied and returned it to me. He managed my safe exit from Karachi airport without going through the immigration counter,” he added.

At the exit,he was put on a black coloured Toyota with two persons sitting on either side and one in the front seat,all of them armed with AK-56 rifles. The vehicle reached a luxurious house in about 30 minutes and another man with a Kalashnikov escorted Yasin to an air-conditioned room,he has said.

Subsequently,Yasin was taken to a hilly region with little habitation around,about 8-10 hours from Karachi and believed to be somewhere in the Pakistani province of Balochistan.

“Next day our training started. There were six instructors,who I understand were from Pakistan army,” he has said,adding that he and some other recruits were taught to handle weapons and explosives and make bombs during the training that lasted about 50 days.

“On completion of training,Amir Reza Khan came to the training camp with two duplicate visa stamps (entry and exit from India) which were required in my passport. We had a brief discussion on jehad,” Yasin has told interrogators.

Khan also told Yasin that his family was worried as he had been missing for so long. Yasin returned to Karachi after a few days,stayed in the same house he had been lodged when he arrived and flew back to Dubai the next day.

“As expected,my father was extremely annoyed with me and took away my passport,” he has said.