Preserve proof of Pakistan terror imprint, NSA Doval tells agencies

NEW DELHI: While monitoring by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has put Pakistan under severe pressure for sponsoring and financing terrorism, Indian counter-terror agencies need to collect and preserve evidence of Islamabads culpability for the consideration of international forums, NSA Ajit Doval has said.
“Everybody knows that Pakistan is supporting and financing terrorism but evidence is required. You have access to it and you understand how information is converted into evidence that can withstand scrutiny of law. So depend on the facts, preserve the facts, put them into a format … they may be used nationally and internationally (to nail Pakistan),” Doval told a conference of chiefs of anti-terrorism squads and special task forces of states organised by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) here.
“One of the biggest pressures that has come on Pakistan today is because of the proceedings of the FATF,” the NSA said.
Citing the late Margaret Thatchers statement from the 1980s that if the media did not report an attack, the terrorists purpose would be defeated, Doval said the objective was to generate fear through publicity. He called for proactive perception management by counter-terror agencies with authorised and trained officers briefing the media to prevent reports that “create more terror in society rather than prepare society to fight terrorism”.
Also asking ATS and STF chiefs to expose Pakistans role in terror attacks, he said, “So many Pakistanis are arrested … there is no harm in giving out their identities and plans to the media. Let the world know about it.”
Pointing to the tendency for counter-terror efforts to be conducted in different stages — getting to know the source of terror, action based on that knowledge and taking the evidence to a court of law and establishing the role of those behind a terror act — Doval impressed on the need to merge the three silos and synergise central and state-level intelligence and investigating agencies.
Listing the challenges in terror investigations, he said the first was the covert role of a state sponsor, which offered a higher degree of deniability as well as resources and technologRead More – Source