Zarar Shah confesses to involvement in Mumbai attacks’

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani investigators have unearthed substantive links between the gunmen who attacked Mumbai in November and a banned militant group, a foreign journal reported on Wednesday.It said in an online report that at least one top Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) leader, Zarar Shah, captured in a raid early this month had confessed to the group’s involvement in the attack.“He is singing,” an unidentified Pakistani security official told the newspaper, referring to Shah. Shah’s admission was backed up by the US intercepts of a telephone call between Shah and one of the attackers during the assault, the Pakistani security official told the newspaper.Shah told interrogators that he was one of the main planners of the assault and he had spoken to the attackers during the rampage to give them advice and keep them focused, the newspaper cited a second person familiar with the investigation as saying.Shah had implicated other LeT members, and had broadly confirmed the account the sole captured gunman told Indian investigators, the second person told the newspaper. Shah was picked up with another LeT commander, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, during Pakistani raids on militants. Pakistani authorities did not have evidence that the LeT was involved in the attacks before the militants were arrested in Azad Kashmir, the security official told the newspaper. Their arrest was based only on the initial guidance from the US and British authorities, the newspaper cited the official as saying.