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Ex-Pak Army major is 26/11 mastermind?

December 02, 2009 18:26 IST

A former Major in the Pakistan Army, who joined the ranks of Lashkar-e-Tayiba (LeT), is emerging as one of the masterminds of the Mumbai carnage and is believed to have been in direct touch with arrested US terror suspect David Headley.

The former armyman -- identified as Sajid Mir -- has turned out to be Headley's handler in Pakistan. He had directed the American to learn to pray like Jews so that he could conduct a recce of Jewish Centre Nariman House in Mumbai and the premises of a newspaper in Denmark, official sources said in Mumbai on Wednesday.

The sources said Mir has been arrested in Pakistan but this could not be independently verified.

The 48-year-old American-born Headley, who was arrested by the FBI sleuths at airport in Chicago in October this year for allegedly plotting to carryout terror strikes in India and Denmark, had told his investigators that he had learnt to pray like Jews at the instance of Mir, as this could help him to target Flemming Rose, a cartoonist of Danish newspaper besides helping him in conducting a reccee of the Nariman House, a place which was attacked by LeT terrorists on November 26.