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TV footage of Mumbai suspect interview released

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-06-29 14:30

LONDON: Channel Four News has released footage of a police interview with a Pakistani man on trial over last year's Mumbai attacks, in which he admitted working for militant group Laskhar-e-Taiba (LeT).

A Mumbai Police-issued photograph shows arrested Islamist militant Mohammed Ajmal Kasab on a hospital bed in Mumbai. A British news outlet has released footage of a police interview with the Pakistani man who is being tried over the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, in which he admitted working for militant group Laskhar-e-Taiba. [Agencies]

Mohammed Ajmal Kasab is accused of being the sole survivor among a 10-member Islamist militant commando group that stormed the city last November, killing 166 people during a 60-hour bloodbath.

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In a video filmed by Indian police as they interviewed him in hospital shortly after his arrest, which was broadcast by Channel Four News, Kasab says: "We were all supposed to die. He said we would go to heaven."

Some of the excerpts correlate with a partial transcript of the interrogation published in March in a Mumbai newspaper, which said it was a verbatim account of Kasab's questioning for about an hour after his arrest.

Channel Four News said the video is not being used as evidence in Kasab's trial because he has retracted the confession, saying it was made under duress.

Kasab was asked how many people he killed, and replied: "Don't know, kept firing and firing." Asked who he was supposed to kill, he said: "Just people."

He said he worked for LeT, the Pakistan-based militant group, adding that his father introduced them. His father was paid in return for Kasab's work.

"He said: 'These people make loads of money and so will you. You don't have to do anything difficult. We'll have money. We won't be poor any more'," Kasab recalled his father telling him.

The full footage will be shown on Channel Four's "Dispatches" programme on Tuesday, along with recordings of many of the shooters' audio conversations with controllers who urged them on.

Some of the shooters held two Jewish hostages captive, and were told to "Do it." "What, shoot them?" one shooter asked. "Yes, do it. Sit them up and shoot them in the back of the head," the controller replied.

Kasab, 21, is accused of "waging war against India", which carries the death penalty, and with destabilising the government, murder, kidnap, robbery, "causing terror" and smuggling illegal arms and high explosives.

He pleaded not guilty to all charges when he appeared in court in May.