The Indian link in US terror fight

Languishing in New Jersey prison for more than three years now, India-born British arms dealer Hemant Lakhani is the lone Indian in the long list of major arrests made in the US on terrorism charges after September 11, 2001.

Lakhani, 71, was sentenced last year on 47 charges after a New Jersey judge found him guilty of trying to provide support to terrorists by brokering sale of soldier-fired missiles. His name figured prominently in the list of major arrests made in the United States for terrorism after 9/11.

A statement issued by the Department of Justice on the eve of the fifth anniversary of 9/11 said: Lakhani was captured in recorded conversations saying he supported use of missiles for shooting down American commercial airliners, and that Osama bin Laden ‘straightened them all out’ and ‘did a good thing’.

However, Lakhani’s arrest was not due to any real act of terrorism, but because of a sting operation carried out by the Federal investigating agencies in cooperation with their Russian counterparts and some other countries.

The sentence against Lakhani, who hails from Gujarat and reached Britain in early 70s, was announced by US District Judge Katharine S Hayden on September 12, 2005 a day after the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attack. This means that Lakhani would now have to spend the rest of his life in a jail.

He has a son, Sanjay, who lives in New York and runs a garment-district clothing business called Survival.

Two other Indian citizens, Moinuddeen Ahmed Hameed, 39, and Vijay Rare, 41, were also arrested along with Lakhani. Both have pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and are awaiting a verdict.