to an international plot of attempted attacks on Israeli diplomats.
Delhi Police say that Mohammad Kazmi, 50, has admitted his involvement in the operation. He is accused of watching movements into and out of the Israeli embassy and of tracking the wife of the Israeli defense attachÈ who was injured in a bombing last month. The actual bomber is believed to have left India immediately after the attack.
The bombing has been linked to the explosions the next day in Bangkok. Indian news reports said the Bangkok police gave the Delhi police an Indian telephone number they found in the cellphone of three of the Bangkok bombers. That was Kazmi’s number. The Delhi police then began to track Kazmi.
On February 13, an attacker on a motorbike attached a magnetic bomb to the car of the wife of the Israeli defense attachÈ—herself an embassy staffer—as she was on her way to pick up her children from the American School. She was severely injured but survived.
In addition to Kazmi’s number being in the cellphones of the Bangkok bombers, Kazmi’s own phone shows he called Iran after the Delhi attack, Delhi police have told reporters.
This suggests to many that the Delhi incident was part of a coordinated series of attacks supposed to be carried out in Delhi, Bangkok and Tbilisi, Georgia. The Thailand attack failed because of premature detonation and the Tbilisi attack was foiled after a bomb was discovered under the car of an employee of the Israeli embassy. The Delhi attack was the only one to go through to conclusion.
Kazmi is a freelance journalist and has worked with the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), Iranian state broadcasting and other Iranian news outlets.
“Kazmi was aware of the conspiracy and worked as a facilitator in the blast. The main accused was in continuous touch with him,” said an Indian police official. The Delhi police have not named the “main accused,” the man who placed the bomb on the Israeli embassy car. Nor have they said he is Iranian, though the Indian media assume that. He is reported to have taken a flight to Indonesia the day after the bombing.
He is thought to have been in touch with Kazmi about a month before the attack and visited Kazmi’s house several times.
Police recovered a laptop, a cellphone and pictures from Kazmi’s home. In one of the pictures, he is seen with the main suspect in the attack. Police also recovered from Kazmi’s home a moped thought to have been used to keep tabs on the movements of Israeli embassy officials.
The motorbike used in the attack – a black Hero Honda Passion Pro – has been recovered. Eyewitnesses originally said the attacker rode a red motorbike, but the police are convinced the black one they now have in their possession is the one that was used.
Police said that Kazmi was promised a handsome amount in exchange for his help in the attacks. He had already received a first installment of $5,000 from the suspected group, the police said.
Kazmi, who is also a freelance newsreader for the Indian channel Doordarshan, runs his own one-man media company called Media Star News and Features. He started work with IRNA in 1983 and then worked with Iranian state broadcasting for some time. He is a regular writer for Urdu-language newspapers in India and has covered the Iran-Iraq war. He is fluent in Farsi. He has also contributed phone interviews to the BBC’s Urdu, Hindi and Farsi services.
Under orders from the government, Indian officials are tight-lipped about drawing any conclusions about the Iranian govern-ment’s involvement in the attack.
India is walking a tightrope as it balances its relations with Israel and Iran. Unlike Israel, it has stopped short of blaming Iran’s intelligence agencies and has instructed its police officials not to implicate any country before a full and final picture of the bombing is available.
Indian police have announced that they are close to arresting two or three more suspects in the coming days.
“We will do a full disclosure on the conspiracy once the foreign nationals involved in the plot are apprehended. We have a fair idea of the plot and the people behind it,” said a top official of the Indian Home Ministry.