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Aftab Ansari, the alleged mastermind behind the American Centre shootout in Kolkata, on Thursday admitted that one of the leaders of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba had provided him with a Pakistani passport.
Sources said Ansari, who had jumped bail and fled to Pakistan in 2000, stated during his interrogation that he had been provided with the Pakistani travel document by the leaders of LeT.
The Central Bureau of Investigation had claimed that it was Aziz Cheema of LeT who had helped him in setting his career after fleeing from India. However, Ansari stated that he was not aware of the identity of the LeT militant, but he had been referred to him by Sheikh Omar, one of the three militants released by India to end the 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines plane in Kandahar.
Sheikh, an important Jaish-e-Mohammed functionary, was arrested by Pakistani police on Tuesday in connection with the abduction of Wall Street Journal scribe Daniel Pearl.
Meanwhile, various agencies questioned Ansari on Thursday following reports that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence had asked him to send funds through hawala channel for ostensibly setting up madrassas in various parts of the country.
Some of the intelligence reports suggested that Ansari used to send his slush funds to India through hawala operators to various conduits of ISI.
The sources said that Ansari, who is to be produced before the first class judicial magistrate in Radhanpur in north Gujarat by 1600 hours on February 16, admitted that he had been able to extract and transfer over Rs 500 million from abductions to Dubai.
Ansari has also confirmed his links with the Lashker-e-Tayiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islamia and also revealed that he had even visited their training camps in Pakistan.
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