Muslim India

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

THE STRANGE CASE OF ATS AND US CITIZEN KEN HAYWOOD FLEEING INDIA

The Times of India redeemed its credibility when it published as its front page banner headlines, the shocking news of Haywood leaving India despite a lookout notice. Haywood had been under Anti Terrorist Squad’s scrutiny, over the matter of the infamous Email supposedly sent out in the name of a fictitious organisation calling itself ‘Indian Mujahideen’, traced to Key Haywood’s laptop. For over weeks, while ATS had questioned reportedly 1000 people and searched neighbourhood apartments, trying to figure out, how Ken Haywood’s laptop could have been hacked, if at all. A narco test on Haywood too had been carried out. According to ATS, Haywood has not been arrested. In Muslim circle, this glaring discriminative practice is a matter of much debate and heartburn, that just because Haywood is a US citizen, he is being given preferential such kid glove treatment. If a similar case had been observed involving an Indian Muslim, the accused would have been summarily incarcerated and given third degree while questioned. Back in US too, Indian citizens have been given similar harsh treatment, when suspected of even peripherally being associated with some terror incident.

ATS has asked him to be available for questioning and a lookout notice has been issued to the immigration authorities. Still, the man, possibly through US consular help, was able to hoodwink immigration authorities at New Delhi airport and flew off to the US.

So much for the spine of Indian authorities who are being harangued to cooperate with the US over global terrorism and for their discriminative behavior when it involves two different nationalities, on their own!

Ken Haywood’s background is reported to be anything but straight forward.

The Indian Express carries a report: ‘The curious case of Kenneth Haywood’, published on Thursday, August 14, 2008:

( http://www.indianexpress.com/story/348646.html )

The curious case of Ken Haywood

Posted online: Thursday, August 14, 2008 at 0052 hrs

As the American undergoes lie detector test, the Anti-Terror Squad is trying to figure out the man behind his personae

Sagnik Chowdhury, Smita Nair & Johnson T A

Mumbai/ Bangalore , August 13: Ken Haywood, the American national from whose Internet Protocol (IP) address the terror e-mail was sent prior to the Ahmedabad serial blasts, underwent lie detector tests on Wednesday, a senior police official said in Mumbai. Maharashtra’s Anti-Terror Squad (ATS), which is probing the case, traced the e-mail to Haywood’s flat in Navi Mumbai and found that his background and job were “of a slightly dubious nature”. But the information available so far is not good enough to charge him or suggest his involvement in the case.

“We have conducted inquiries on Haywood’s background and his company. These are of a slightly dubious nature, and even the company he works for and its office are a bit suspect,” ATS chief Hemant Karkare told The Indian Express. “However, this does not directly link him with the case in any way. After all, having a suspicious background, or even working for a bogus company is not enough to book anyone for involvement in terror activities,” he added.
G S Hegde, Haywood’s lawyer, said: “The ATS has not said anything about Haywood’s personal life, or his involvement in any criminal activities. We maintain he is innocent.”

The police in Mumbai and Bangalore have said there is primary evidence to show that Haywood’s wi-fi account was hacked into and compromised, resulting in the terror e-mail on July 26 — five minutes before the blasts. Questions remain as to who did it and how they picked on Haywood’s computer network.

Haywood is supposed to be a corporate training manager and general manager with a company called Campbell White, which describes itself on its website as a “premier executive soft skills trainer”.

On the corporate side, Daniel Rubianes is the managing director of the company with its main office at the first floor of the M S Plaza in east Bangalore. Rubianes, like many other employees of Campbell White, wears a second hat. On Thursdays and Sundays, he is pastor Dan Rubianes, the head of the Door Christian Centre — a church with origins in Arizona in the US but relatively new to India. Door Christian Centre is a part of the Pentecostal Christian Fellowship Ministries, also known as the Potter’s House. Haywood is a functionary of the Potter’s House in Mumbai.

The Indian Express found that the Mumbai office of the MNC is located in two small adjoining rented rooms on the ground floor of Sanpada railway station complex in Navi Mumbai. The two rooms also serve as prayer rooms on Sundays and Thursdays for the Potter’s House. A notice pasted on the wall says the community service has been cancelled until further notice and is signed by Haywood.

Brother Richard D’Souza, the contact person for the centre, said, “We have been running our prayer service for the last one year from these premises. It is only this year that Campbell White opened its branch here.” He said 20 students learn English from Haywood.

Campbell White has, meanwhile, removed details regarding its employees from its website to protect “workers and their families from malicious intents by anyone”. “Campbell White will continue to support police authorities with full cooperation... We have emphasised to them that they should work diligently and quickly to find suspects and bring them to justice so that Mr. Haywood may return to his normal course of business,” it says.

ATS officials raided Haywood’s residence on July 27. Ten computers from neighbouring houses and Haywood’s residence were sent to the Kalina Forensic Science Laboratory for analysis.

Physical and Internet-based checks on other past and present employees of Campbell White like Scott Grabowska, a former Mumbai-based international protocol trainer, David Curwen-Walker, a senior operations manager, and Jonathan Heimberg, a senior information services manager, both in Bangalore, have shown links to the church. For instance, Curwen-Walker and Heimberg head the Door churches at Kammanahalli and Koramangala in Bangalore.

However, Campbell White and the Door church officials have remained elusive on the links between the two entities. When contacted Michael White, an Australia-based director for Campbell White, refused to comment on the India operations. “You must speak to Dan Rubianes in Bangalore,” he said.

Some churchgoers at the Door Christian Centre in Cox Town in Bangalore said Rubianes had left for the US on August 3 to attend a Bible conference in Arizona.

“Campbell White is a business that pastor Dan runs. We as churchgoers are not aware of its nature,” said Hemanth Kumar, an engineering student, who has been associated with the church since it began three years ago. “Being American, pastors are equipped to work as accent trainers. In Bangalore, many such people work in churches,” added Ravi Kumar, a member of the church in Bangalore.

Incidentally, Joseph Campbell, who is listed as the US director of Campbell White, is believed to be the seniormost pastor of the Door church in Arizona.

editor@expressindia.com



It is therefore strange that one clue, that could have possibly turned the whole direction of bomb blast investigations to foreign elements, was so callously handled. Even for media, this is most unusual and has created great suspicion in the minds of people that a bogey of SIMI line up of usual suspects had been used to camouflage, the possible link of a sleeper cell posing as Christian Missionaries that could have been behind the overall organisation of the serial bomb blasts, in Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Surat, through their local agents.

Some more surprises were in the pipeline, when one fine day last week, columns and columns of print media space, in Times of India and other newspapers, written out by possibly each and every of their writer staff, doing overtime work, to have come out with the greatest fiction story of the arrests and involvement of SIMI suspects, without any need to provide any hard facts over such allegation. Given police record, people are most skeptical about their Goebbellian propaganda bringing out the true facts. Police credibility is at its lowest ebb. And if the media is hand in glove with such dubious exercises, it will not only lose its own credibility, but would do a great disservice to the nation.

Under such an atmosphere of press bending to political and police pressure to break fake stories on the gullible public, Times of India’s strong exception to the flight of Kenneth Haywood, is certainly laudable. This proves that there are more to the affairs of the state than that is revealed to the public. The dangerous game that some rogue elements are playing in demonizing a preferred victimized community cannot bring peace to the nation. The real culprits with international agenda of destabilising country after country, for self-serving objectives, should be brought to justice. But before that the people should be dutifully informed with the stark facts and nothing but the facts.

Kenneth Hayward’s lead should not be left out of the investigation of serial bomb blasts in Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Surat. His possible accomplices, if any, should be traced and exposed. India cannot afford to go soft on terror, coming from sources other than those conveniently preferred by a prejudiced police and investigative force. All leads should be dutifully pursued in the interest of the security, integrity and communal harmony of the nation.


Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
www.ghulammuhammed.wordpress.com

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Idea of India

In the following article, the author, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a very level-headed commentator, has harked backed to the Idea of India. I would think, that’s all for the birds. The real movers and shakers were the Western Powers, who had cut up India, to get a piece of land as their last army post on the subcontinent, for their own global strategic needs against the expanding ambitions of Soviet Russia and to protect their own oil interests in the gulf.

In India, the Brahmins, who dominated the Hindu brigade, came out with an Idea of India, which had no place for the Muslims.

Muslims were fooled into believing that Pakistan was an Islamic country carved out of the body of India, as a big favour to them. In fact, Pakistan has remained a Western satellite country, with Western military aid all over the years, bolstering its only powerful institution, the Army that has no brief with its people. People of Pakistan were merely the side show.

The wheels of fortune had made a new turn. Indian subcontinent is once more the most coveted piece of real estate for the western axis powers of US/UK/Israel. For all practical purposes, India has gone under. It is the Axis that is moving the pieces on the grand chessboard. It is the US axis that wants Kashmir free. Gullible Muslim leaders, like Geelani, Mirwaiz Farooq and others, call them Islamists or separatist, are once again chasing the chimera of a Islamic paradise on earth. They will not get anything better than an exchange of one yoke with another of the similar kind.

On the other hand, India has completely succumbed to the hubris promised by America, and however much its thinkers and planners may exert their brain power and come out with another version of Idea of India, in this globalised world, their old limitations have now been taken over by much more debilitating limitations.

No army of king’s men and horses will ever succeed in putting the humpty dumpty together again. Not at least in this century. Meanwhile both the Brahmins and Muslims will pay for their folly.

I would invite my readers to read the following article in the context that I have laid out for study and comments:


http://www.indianexpress.com/story/350345._.html

The question in Kashmir

By Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Posted online: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 0007 hrs


Can the idea of India overcome the Indian state’s limitations?



I do not know how to address Kashmiri leaders. All the appellations that would be used to establish a connection, common citizenship, shared nationhood, cultural bonds, pragmatic affiliations, appear to be little more than rhetorical pretences, hollowed out by unmeaning overuse. I also cannot address them without a guilty conscience: the Indian state has so often let Kashmiris down. I cannot imagine what it is to live like under half a million troops, a standing reminder that no matter what our politicians claim, our bonds are sustained more by force than by spontaneity. I cannot imagine what it is to raise a new generation entirely under the shadow of violence and suspicion. I cannot imagine what it is like to have one’s identity held hostage to competing nationalisms: to be mercilessly used by Pakistan to disguise its own crisis of legitimacy, and subjected to Indian anxiety that everything it stands for will come unravelled at the slightest hint of dissent in Kashmir. I can imagine what it is like to have the electoral process subverted. But I cannot imagine the depth of distrust that repeated violations have produced. I cannot imagine what conducting politics under constant threat of assassination is like, or what the disabling of all questions of justice under the garb of national security means. I cannot understand the wrenching of a cultural equilibrium destroyed, by Islamisation and ethnic cleansing of the Pandits. The chasm that divides us is perhaps that our daily lives are less marked by the distrust, betrayals, violence and suspicion than mark yours; our invocations of shared citizenship seem scarcely up to the task of overcoming them.


We had hoped that time would heal wounds; that a modicum of a political process, while not compensating for past ills, would at least hold out the possibility of a different future. But two issues reopened old wounds. Amarnath went from being a showcase of cultural harmony to a reminder that there is no such thing as an ordinary administrative transaction in Kashmir. The agitation in Jammu was a reminder that another region of the state had now successfully constructed its own narrative of victimhood, resentful of the special status it perceived the Valley to possess. But these issues, for the most part tractable by small compromises, became moot. They were surpassed by the depth of feeling in Kashmir, as if the entire weight of modern Indian history had once again chosen to explode in the Valley: the green flags of Pakistan, militant sub-nationalism, the failures of Indian democracy, the anxieties of Indian nationalism. Long unresolved questions burst to the surface, in the same entrenched categories that had made them unresolvable, in the same hardened rhetoric that sees even the slightest hint of compromise as a betrayal.


Who should one blame? The original terms on which India and Pakistan were carved out, that still haunt them? Nehru, whose own sense of legitimacy could get so overweening that he stopped listening? Hindu nationalists, who under the garb of nationalism make minorities, feel insecure? The Indian state for promising a plebiscite it knew it could not deliver? The Valley politicians, who for most of history, have had a better sense of how azadi can raise the political temperature, than they have ideas about how it would work in practice? We can blame Pakistan for fomenting violence. We can blame the politicians in the Valley for behaving like most Indian politicians do: lazy when in government, ardent rabble rousers when out of power, more interested in provocation than peace.


We can blame the current government. After all, the prime minister did promise to restore Kashmir to its natural geography. All he gave Kashmir instead was a limited, measly bus service that has a long waiting list. He did not have the courage to override his national security apparatus and make good on his promises. His government chose not to provide effective means of assuaging Kashmir’s anxiety over the so called blockade. We can blame the “all party” committee that confuses being all party with all people. We can blame the general sense of anarchy being let loose across India, where even the smallest group can hold the state to ransom simply because they can block a highway. We can blame shadowy militants, for whom the cause is merely a pretext to unleash terror. We can blame the Indian security forces, and state officials, who as always, are working without political direction.


Some will blame the special status of Kashmir. Instead of bringing security, it has permanently suspended it in a nether zone: unable to integrate with India and access its power structures, unable to visualise a future of its own. On the one hand we have not got peace. On the other hand many wonder whether the special dispensations Kashmir has got — excluding outsiders from ownership, the Indian state’s unprecedented solicitousness for the Valley’s demographic composition (just contrast that with Pakistan), the high per capita flow of funds — may have served only to heighten distances, rather than create stronger bonds. There are people who understand the ways in which the Indian state has failed Kashmir. But fewer are able to fathom why, if all those special safeguards are honoured and a genuine representative process is put in place, azadi should rear its head again.


The Indian state has a legitimacy crisis in Kashmir. But so tangled are the thread of our identities that it is hard to know what warps and wrinkles pulling at one thread will produce. Every one is looking for formulas, but when trust has broken down formulas are pointless. There is also a colossal presumptuousness in doling out advice at this juncture. It is not clear by what authority anyone can give advice. The question is: who will have the political courage to overcome the past, to break this impossible equilibrium, where practical common sense is sacrificed to chimerical abstractions on all sides? But this is a moment of reckoning. Can the idea of India transcend the limitations of the Indian state? This is one question Kashmiri politicians have to answer for themselves. If the answer to this question is a resounding no, then India has to ponder its options. India has in the past sacrificed democracy in Kashmir to its own nationalism. What would it say for the idea of India, if it cannot elicit voluntary allegiance in Kashmir? Will it live with the permanent rebuke to its democracy that Kashmir represents, or will it risk a new paradigm that might achieve what this endless cycle of mutual suspicion has not?

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi express@expressindia.com

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