unclaimed property

Remember how before 9/11 somebody made a killing on stock puts but then never claimed the money? Nah, that wouldn't look good.

Well, similarly, nobody has claimed the bodies of the Mumbai attackers.

Mumbai/New Delhi: Almost a year after they were killed during the terrible assault on Mumbai last November, the bodies of the nine terrorists continue to remain in Mumbai’s J.J. Hospital morgue. There are no claimants and the authorities are clueless on what to do with them.

They continue to remain in a room sealed with round-the-clock security and where the temperature is set at four degrees Celsius to prevent any decomposition.

The 10 gunmen killed over 170 people in a series of coordinated attacks that began Nov 26 last year. Mohammed Ajmal Amir alias Kasab, currently undergoing trial, was the only one captured alive after the strikes that targeted two luxury hotels, the city’s main train station, a hospital and a Jewish centre.

Nobody wants these bodies. Not the Muslims in India:

The Muslim Council has flatly refused to allow the burial of the bodies of the slain terrorists in the Marine Lines Bada Qabrastan (cemetery). The council said it also sent a message to all cemeteries in India that none of the bodies should be buried on Indian soil.

The influential Muslim Jama Masjid Trust, which runs the 7.5-acre Bada Qabrastan graveyard, said it would not bury the gunmen because they were not true followers of Islam.

Some outfits had even suggested soon after the attack that the terrorists’ bodies be dumped outside the premises of the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi or thrown into the Arabian Sea.

Pakistan doesn't want them:

“We had informed the Pakistan government about the bodies. However, there has been no response from them so far,” Nikam told IANS.

...Joint Commissioner of Police Rakesh Maria said: “We had sent evidence to Pakistan to claim the bodies of the terrorists with their Pakistani addresses. We have sent another reminder last month but are yet to receive any correspondence from them.”

The Pakistan High Commission on its part washed its hands off the entire affair.

“They are not our friends, they are not followers of Islam. We have nothing to with them at all. Why ask us?” said a senior official.

The FBI doesn't want them:

So far, apart from the investigators from Mumbai Police, state and central agencies, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) representatives have been the only ones permitted to view the bodies.

Yeah, I'm not sure either why the FBI is involved there, but they claimed to have jurisdiction, and there are more curiosities like that here, but...anyway, the bodies just remain in the morgue:

Shortly after the attackers were gunned down, their bodies were brought to the hospital where a team of doctors performed autopsies and filed post-mortem reports with police.

Thereafter, the bodies were embalmed and shifted to the room where they lie.

According to hospital staff, the bodies are still in “perfect condition, recognisable and identifiable”. But the big question is how long will the bodies continue to remain in the morgue? A decision will have to be taken sooner or later.

I found this over at There Are No Sunglasses, but the original story is from msn. That means it is fit for public consumption, which means it advances a sanctioned narrative.

Let's recall that the approved narrative claimed the terrorists were highly sophisticated Islamic extremists from Pakistan.

Now let's review some of the early details. The terrorists were very young, and they targeted British and Americans guests as well as the Chabad Lubavitch headquarters, portrayed as harmless Jewish scholars. They killed mostly bystanders. The situation quickly became very confusing. Experts suspected Al Qaeda.

Les Blough at Axis of Logic unpacked it quickly:

Motivation: The only difference between the factors used by the capitalist media and ours is motivation. Regarding motivation, CNN states "they (Deccan Mujahideen) want to create as much damage and attention to themselves as possible". CIA/Mossad are masters at destruction, but the last thing they want is bringing attention to themselves. Motivation for the U.S. to take it's war to Pakistan fits perfectly with these attacks. As a matter of fact, Barack Obama and Joe Biden already declared their intention to take the war to Pakistan and stated with certainty that Obama's "mettle would be tested" by a major international "incident" in the near future. If the perpetrators want to draw attention to themselves, their method (i.e. killing civilians), simply does not make sense unless one buys the Bush regime's religion-based simplism that they are simply "evil". Militant's fighting for causes such as independence or national sovereignty want least of all, international negative attention or popular hatred. The only thing missing from the corporate media explanation is George W. Bush's idiotic claim that "the terrorists are jealous of our freedoms". Using this the corporate media's methodology, it is entirely reasonable and just as easy to implicate the CIA and Mossad.

Then Qasab/Kasab, the tenth one captured alive and caught on camera, became a little problematic because he was "too fat to be a Jedi," to quote Yoda. Plus he had the wrong haircut.

From Wayne Madsen:

According to PTI, one LET terrorist captured by India, Ajmal Qasab, said he and his fellow terrorists sailed from Karachi and entered Mumbai’s port area with the help of Ibrahim’s agents who run several customs facilities in Mumbai. However, there are some questions being raised about Qasab and his claims. The so-called security camera shot of Qasab, who is being billed by the media as the “lone surviving gunman,” at Chatrapathi Sivaji train terminal in Mumbai, appears fake. The angle is too narrow for a train station which would have a wider angle and be shot from higher up than the photo being shopped by the Indian police. However, according to Asian intelligence sources, Qasab may have been trained by Hindu militants and was rushed to the scene of the attack for a photo opportunity hastily arranged by the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) propaganda team. One Asian intelligence source who has spent a great deal of time in Pakistan reports that he has “never seen a haircut like his [Qasab’s] in Pakistan or on either side of Line of Control in Kashmir.” He also pointed out that Qasab is a bit overweight for an average “mujad” who slim down in training by exercising and eating a sparse diet of lentils and flat bread.

Hmm. That's not what it says here:

The heavily built men, who had undergone training at a special marine camp established by the Lashkar-e-Taibat (LeT) terrorist group in Pakistan, had also used steroids to build a tougher physique...."These men were all toned, suggesting they had been doing some heavy training for the attacks. This explains why they managed to battle the commandos for over 50 hours with no food or sleep."

...The 10 men who attacked prominent Mumbai landmarks were able to hold off hundreds of India's best trained special forces by mounting sophisticated ambushes, maintaining a constant, steady rate of return fire and a superior knowledge of the layout of the buildings seized.

The gunman captured during the attacks on Mumbai has told police he underwent months of commando-style training in an Islamist militant camp in Pakistan.

Or maybe he just came from somewhere else entirely. Nobody has ever heard of him in the village where he supposedly came from.

So. Who could they really be?

Nobody wants to claim the bodies. Just like after 9/11, it wouldn't look good. And the last thing the perpetrators want is to bring attention to themselves.

In addition, allegedly the bodies are *not* in "perfect condition, recognizable and identifiable."

Rediff.com has interviewed the doctors who conducted the post-mortems on the dead hostages and terrorists, and it is their expert opinion that a battle of attrition took place over three days at the Oberoi and Taj hotels. The mutilation of the bodies was unlike anything they had seen in their careers in forensics.

For one, the bodies of the victims bore horrible signs of torture. Now this is understandable if the victims are being tormented by half-human beasts, but it seems strange that two terrorists could simultaneously fight and keep Indian commandos at bay for 62 hours, and also have the time to torture their victims. Yet the doctors were emphatic that:

"It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood."

To my mind, it seems apparent that the terrorists who kept the NSG commandos engaged and those who tortured and killed the hotel staff and guests were two separate groups.

This suspicion is intensified by the startling revelation that the terrorists also did not meet a clean death. Doctors who conducted the post-mortem said the bodies of the terrorists – especially their faces - were beyond recognition. The security forces identified the bodies as those of terrorists [on TV they said it was because of the presence of weaponry near the bodies].

One terrorist was shot through either eye (i.e., both eyes!!!). As the NSG commandos never got to such close range with the terrorists, and nobody commits suicide by shooting both his own eyes, it follows that the killers were somebody else. Since none of the hotel guests could have the kind of weaponry used in the conflict, this suggests the presence of a mysterious third party, making the terrorists the victims of a classic double-cross – the stuff of spy thrillers. Actually, it reminds one of the convenient murder of the alleged killer of President John F. Kennedy.

Hence it would be entirely in order to closely interrogate each and every guest, especially the foreign guests, before allowing them to leave the country. Without false emotionalism, we should also fingerprint them for the future; who knows what Interpol cooperation may throw up.

Top Russian counter-terrorism expert, Vladimir Klyukin, an Afghan war veteran, opines that the Mumbai attackers were not "ordinary terrorists" and were probably trained by the special operations forces set up in Pakistan by US intelligence prior to the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. In his view, the nature of the Mumbai events suggests the signature of the 'Green Flag' special operations forces created by the Americans in Pakistan, just a year before the Soviet withdrawal.

Guerrilla operations of the Mumbai kind require at least two-three years of preparatory work with experienced instructors. Raw trainees cannot hold four huge complexes in a city to ransom for so long. The Russian Interfax news agency reported the former KGB veteran as surmising the involvement of at least 50 terrorists, given the geography and sheer scale of the attacks. This seems like a legitimate estimation.

What is more, the only way 9 coordinated attacks can occur simultaneously is by using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) or live maps for communication and control. These are not normally owned by private parties. Initial investigations also suggested that as many as seven terrorists included mostly British-born Pakistanis, and one does hope that these leads are not covered up. The reports also suggested some gunmen were captured, but later media reports highlighted that only one terrorists was caught alive at the railway station. So there is a lot of confusion here that needs to be cleared up.

Indeed. Go over and read the whole thing.

And as for mutilating the faces beyond recognition...what does that mean? Probably they peeled the skin off, which I've read is a CIA calling-card going way back. So nobody wants to be incriminated by claiming the bodies, and the faces have allegedly been mutilated beyond recognition so now nobody *has* to claim the bodies. How convenient is that?