Pakistan said to plan attack against Israeli, US consulates in India

Pakistani intelligence and the country’s embassy in Sri Lanka planned to carry out terror attacks against the Israeli consulate in Bangalore, India, and the US consulate in Chennai, The Times of India reported Sunday.

Mohammed Sakir Hussain, a 37-year-old Sri Lankan national arrested on April 29, revealed during the course of an interrogation by Indian security agencies that he had been tasked by Pakistan’s embassy in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo — on behalf of the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI — with orchestrating the attacks on the two consulates, unnamed sources told the paper.

Hussain allegedly said that he was instructed to arrange documents for two bombers traveling from Maldives to Chennai, and to oversee their accommodations.

The investigators claimed photographs of the two consulates from various angles had been mailed to the two suspects, as well as to the embassy. An unnamed source maintained that a PDF file with detailed sketches of the two buildings was sent as well, and that an electronic signature shows that the images were downloaded by embassy employees.

Muhammad Daud Ehtisham, press attache of the Pakistani embassy in Sri Lanka, denied the reports, calling them “a malicious media campaign to tarnish the image of Pakistan. This story is of a highly speculative nature and bears no truth,” he said.

“The government of Pakistan and [its] state institutions are very responsible entities, and they don’t indulge in such…tactics.”