HYDERABAD, 5 September — A 30 million rupees (about $600,000) ransom paid for the release of an Indian businessman found its way to the mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, police claimed yesterday.
The ransom was routed through illegal "hawala" channels via the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, Pakistan and the Gulf to Muhammad Atta, who planned the attacks on the World Trade Center and who piloted one of the two planes that slammed into the twin towers. The startling revelation was made at a meeting of senior police officials called by Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu to discuss the law and order situation in the state. Pointing to the linkages between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and terrorist groups in India, Inspector General of Police Shiv Shankar said the ransom paid for the release of Partha Roy Burman, a top businessman in Calcutta, in June last year eventually found its way to the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Abdul Kareem, also known as Kareem Dollar, was the Hyderabad conduit for transferring the funds, Shiv Shankar maintained. He had allegedly passed on the money to a man named Shafiq in the Gulf who was a member of the Dawood Ibrahim gang that had kidnapped Burman.
