The last refuge.....

In the recent past, accountability journalism has become the new buzzword both in the newspapers and on TV. Who will judge the judges, is the question posed often by these crusading journalists, as they seek for the truth on behalf, they say, of the masses. Rarely, however, does anyone ever ask who will evaluate and judge the integrity of these journalists posing as your representatives. Should they not be held to the same standard of integrity and honesty that they seek to impose on others ? Or should their lapses be swept under the rug and all their errors be forgiven under the rubric of all is fair since they personify " freedom of the press".

The Mumbai massacre brought this issue to light in a particularly direct way. The coverage of the murders and the commando rescue operations during the three days of November, with a number of competing cable new outlets in the fray, led to dangerous leaks, hindering effective respones and possibly endangering innocent lives. They may have been born of excess zeal and lack of professionalism on the part of the young untrained journalist but which nevertheless contributed to an atmosphere of panic. In some cases this zeal certainly imperiled the lives of hostages held in the two hotels during the operation. It was widely acknowledged that the terrorists and their handlers in Pakistan were monitoring our TV channels and calibrating their depredations and attacks in going after specific targets trapped as hostages based on these reports. Yet even after the event was over, there was little protest of these excesses and lapses in judgment from the other senior journalists or editors. No columns, to my knowledge, were written by any of our pontificating pundits exploring the limits of freedom of press versus the rights of innocent bystanders who could become victims of this injudicious reporting. When asked whether the journalists had a duty to take into account the possible results of their work on endangering the lives of others, many journalists absolved their more aggressive fellow journalists talking of excess zeal born of competition and mumbling about the publics right to information. Others admitted the complete lack of professionalism on the part of both the field journalists and their editors/owners but refused to be quoted on record. It seemed as if all the journalists closed ranks as a fraterinity in refusing to condemn these practices just as doctors do after a botched fatal operation.

A particularly eggrecious example was of a senior journalist from a prominent TV cable network. Her coverage of the Mumbai massacre certainly imperiled lives -- including ours. My wife and I were held hostage in the Trident hotel during this November attack. After the initial flurry of killings in the hotel, we were informed on our cellphone that NSG commandos were planning a rescue operation. But as we turned on the TV, we found this senior journalist excitedly pointing out the launching post of the operations telling the entire world that the commandos would come from that " brown building next to the hotel". This, I understand, led to an exchange of bullets and may have led the commandos to alter their plans. That it was a serious error was clear because a few seconds after this excited utterance, all TV's in the Trident hotel were shut off. ( Of course the live coverage continued for those outside including the handlers and abettors of the terrorists !). Another cable channel announced that negotiations were under way to rescue a retired director of the oil company thereby inadvertently alerting the terrorists to the location of another possible hostage or attack. These were clearly dangerous statement which could have led to additional unneeded fatalities.

But no one from the journalist world condemned these lapse of judgment. Indeed citizen bloggers were the only ones who raised these issues and wanted to discuss the limits of press coverage during a critical operation when public lives were at stake. Instead one citizen blogger, who wrote a critical and mostly accurate account of these journalistic lapses, was pressurized by the TV channel and forced to recant with an apology. So did these defenders of the freedom of press muzzle citizen bloggers -- and there were over 3000 of them- and bury any attempt to bring to light the shoddy journalistic practices to repair them for the future.

The TV channel may have won this battle with that citizen blogger. But as for me, I will refuse to view this cable channel or its senior journalist from now on. This is my response - and should be yours- if we are to preserve the freedom of the press and some degree of integrity and accountability in our public life. No one , not even the journalists, can be absolved from this.

Why we came back to Trident

It was about two months ago that my wife and I were in the Trident hotel in Mumbai when the terrorists struck and we were held hostage for two days in our room. We were finally rescued on Friday, November 28 and discovered the mayhem and murder outside our doors that had taken place-- over 31 people had been killed by the terrorists including 11 staff of the hotel. We were glad to return to our placid life in the US but when an opportunity came in January this year to return to India we grabbed at it. All our family and friends were aghast warning us of the uncertain situation in the country with the possibility of more such incidents and the possibility of war with Pakistan. When we said that during this trip we would be in Mumbai for a few days, our daughter and son were furious that we would even consider such a foolish journey and there were rumblings and murmuring from my daughter who was visiting us from her perch in New York which included words such as " insane", " old age"," I give up " etc. I thought it wise not to mention that it was our plan to return to our room in the Trident hotel where we had survived the crisis ! Why did we want to return to the Trident hotel and to our room ? I tried to explain this to my children but it is always difficult to explain the rationale of your actions to your children- so it was when they were young and so it remains even though they are grown up and busy with their own lives. On the other hand, parents tend to underestimate the intensity of passion and emotion of their young.

When the invitation came to return to Mumbai for a series of seminars in january, truth be told, I hesitated a bit. And then I realized that this hesitation was exactly what the terrorists were seeking. The objective of the terrorists were clear- to create mayhem, disrupt the commercial life of India's premier city, strike terror in its inhabitants and force people to alter the tenor of their lives. We needed to respond to that both individually and collectively. As Burke had said two centuries ago "The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing". There were three reasons why we decided to return but the first was simple defiance. We refuse to be intimidated by terrorists and were damned if we would allow random jihadis to dictate the direction of our lives. So our journey back was a small and perhaps insignificant gesture to say that terrorists would not dictate our lives.

A second reason was gratitude.The staff in the hotel and various other people connected with the hotel had rallied to our aid during the seige and we needed to thank them. The hotel staff in particular had been brave and couregous and considerate in looking after the residents. They merited all our gratitude. And we also wanted to stay in the hotel whose occupancy had dropped by 50% after the attack and was suffering a lack of guests. Of course going back to our old room was simply a gesture !

And thirdly, it was and is a beautiful hotel and our room overlooked the peaceful bay and we were pampered by the staff on our return. They had cleaned up the entire floor and we were the sole occupants of the floor during our stay !
There was massive secuirity around the hotel including a permenent army contingent on duty outside and we never felt safer.

Terrorists in Mumbai - an update

My wife and I had been in Trident hotel when the terrorists had struck in Mumbai in November. I had posted a blog of our experiences. I have since learned of what really transpired outside our hotel room during this period and it makes for a chilling read. This updates include three eye witness accounts, an excerpt from the government of india report issued last week and copies of cellphone conversations that the terrorists had with their handlers in Pakistan......

When we were inside our room during this entire period, we had little idea of what was really happening outside our door. So I tried to piece together from various accounts what really happened in Trident ..

Two young men, dressed in jeans and green t-shirts, carrying backpacks and toting AK-47 walked through the main entrance of the Trident hotel at 9:30 pm on Wednesday, November 26. They were spraying bullets from their AK 47 as they walked in, past the door scanner. They shot the security guard and two bellhops. The hotel had metal detectors, but none of the security personnel carried a weapon.

The gunmen raced through the marble-floored lobby, past the grand piano into the adjoining Verandah restaurant, firing at the guests and shattering the windows. As people ducked and dived to the ground, they threw two grenades in the lobby, shattering the glass windows that looked out into the sea.

At the end of the lobby, they burst into a bar called the Opium Den, shooting dead a hotel staff member. Then they ran after a group of guests who tried to escape through a rear service area. They killed them, too.

Schubert Vaz was a witness to this: “I was playing the piano as usual as I have for 27 years at the sea-facing lobby of the Oberoi, when I heard gun shots. As soon as I realized that gunmen had entered the lobby and were shooting people, I ran into the Opium Den bar. They had already killed two bellboys. Other bodies were on the floor.

But the terrorists were going into restaurants and firing. Along with some Oberoi staffers and guests, we next ran into the computer room. We felt that was also not safe. We next headed for the back-up systems room which had batteries and so on. I could continually hear gunshots.

I called up my brother-in- law over the cell phone and spoke softly to tell him that terrorists had taken over the Oberoi, but not to tell my wife. If I was delayed, I asked him to tell her that a guest had invited me to play in his house after my duty hours at the Oberoi. If I did not come home by morning, it meant I was in serious trouble.

We were hiding in the back-up systems room when one of the terrorists entered. He started firing from his machine gun. He shot a 20-year old Oberoi management trainee, Jasmine. She died. He killed some guests at point blank range.

I thought my time had come to die. I could see the image of my family flash before my eyes. At that time I prayed, "Lord, save me." The terrorist stopped firing. We were very lucky as for some reason he did not spray the room with bullets as he could have done with a machine gun. He just fired single shots. I could not see him, but could see the muzzle of the gun from where I was hiding. If he had sprayed bullets all of us in the room would have died.

The terrorist did not say a word while he was killing people. He was not angrily shouting, but appeared calm and methodical as he was shooting at us. That made him scarier. The terrorist left the room. I asked others in the room, including some foreign guests, to put their mobile phones in silent mode. We waited.

After about 30 minutes, we began to think of how to leave the hotel. We decided to leave for the Regal Room, and there we found our senior managers who were wonderfully helpful. They asked us to keep calm, and told us security forces will rescue us. We were then taken in groups out of Oberoi, to the nearby INOX theatre where we waited until morning. At about 5.30 am, I took a local train to my home in the suburbs.”

Another story : “Mr Jones was dining at the Oberoi with a colleague when chaos broke out. "We decided to go to a bar on the roof of the Trident hotel," he said. "It's about the 33rd floor, and we got up there and the bar was closed, so we headed back down to the lobby of the hotel," explained Mr Jones. "As we got to the lobby, the doors of the lift opened and we heard bangs. "The Japanese gentlemen who were in front of us in the lift... stepped out. Immediately they indicated we should get back into the lift. As they got back into the lift one of them was shot. I'm not sure if he was shot once or twice, but he was certainly shot in the back of the leg quite badly, with blood and flesh and bone just showering us in the lift." Mr Jones said he desperately pressed the close doors button on the lift, in a bid to escape. "There was more firing - it felt like the gunman was coming towards us," he said. Mr Jones said he was hiding in the lift "trying not to be shot" as the gunfire was "getting louder and louder". But the foot of the man who had been hit was preventing the doors from closing, and Mr Jones had to get down and pull his foot, which was in a pool of blood. Mr Jones fled to his room on the 28th floor of the hotel, and shortly afterwards was sent to a safe area in a basement ballroom. "We stayed there for about an hour. There were a few panics obviously," added Mr Jones. "From the basement ballroom we left the hotel via a back door in groups of 10. We had to poke our heads out of the door and leg it - run as fast as we can." Mr Jones said he was now safe in his offices in the city. "That's where we've been holed up ever since and watching it unfold on TV. "I feel pretty bad, but I feel less shaken than I had been."

The gunmen returned to the Verandah, climbed a staircase, dashed down a corridor lined with jewelry and clothes shops, and stopped in front of the glass doors of Tiffin Restaurant, a swanky restaurant with a sushi bar in the Oberoi hotel.

They killed four of six friends who live in south Mumbai and had just settled down at a table near the front door. One member of the group, a mother of two, threw herself to the ground and shut her eyes, pretending to be dead. The men circled the restaurant, firing at point blank range into anyone who moved before rushing upstairs to an Indian restaurant called Kandahar.

The manager of the Kandahar restaurant on the first floor saw what was happening and tried to close the door to his restaurant but the terrorists shot the door open, killed him. Then they compelled some of the staff to set fire to the restaurant and then shot him dead as well.

Restaurant workers there ushered guests closest to the kitchen inside. The assailants jumped in front of another group that tried to run out the door. "Stop," they shouted in Hindi. They corralled about 20 diners and led them up to the 18th floor. During this, some of the people managed to open the fire doors on the 14th floor and escape. Others were not so lucky. One man in the group dialed his wife in London and told her he'd been taken hostage but was OK. "Everybody drop your phones," one of the assailants shouted, apparently overhearing. Phones clattered to the floor as the three women and 13 men dug through their purses and pockets and obeyed.

On the 18th floor, the gunmen shoved the group out of the stairwell. They lined up the 13 men and three women and lifted their weapons. "Why are you doing this to us?" a man called out. "We haven't done anything to you."

"Remember Babri Masjid?" one of the gunmen shouted, referring to a 16th-century mosque built by India's first Mughal Muslim emperor and destroyed by Hindu radicals in 1992.

"Remember Godhra?" the second attacker asked, a reference to the town in the Indian state of Gujarat where religious rioting that evolved into an anti-Muslim pogrom began in 2002.

"We are Turkish. We are Muslim," someone in the group screamed. One of the gunmen motioned for two Turks in the group to step aside.

One of the terrorists received a phone call asking him to blast all the people. Which they then proceeded to do in cold blood. About 15 people were killed. Some fell under the bodies and escaped. A few minutes later the terrorists walked upstairs to the terrace. Unbeknownst to the terrorists, four of the men were still alive.

All this happened in the first hour of the start of the carnage.

There was an eyewitness to all of this and his son tells the horrible tale” “On Wednesday night, my father and his two friends arrived at the Indian restaurant on the first floor of the Oberoi Hotel for dinner at about 10pm. They had barely sat down when they heard gun shots in the lobby of the hotel. The terrorists, armed with AK-47s, grenades and plastic explosives, had entered the hotel and were executing everybody sitting in the ground floor restaurant. Realizing the situation, the staff of the restaurant my father was in asked them to quickly exit through the kitchen. As the guests tried to rush into the kitchen, one terrorist burst into the restaurant and began to shoot anyone that remained in the restaurant. At this point my father was in the kitchen and along with his two friends rushed to the fire exit. They had barely descended a few steps when they were trapped from both ends by terrorists. The terrorists then rounded up anyone alive (about 20 people) and made them climb the service staircase to the 18th floor. On reaching the 18th floor landing they made the people line up against a wall. One terrorist then positioned himself on the staircase going up from the landing and the other on the staircase going down from the landing. Then, in a scene right out of the Holocaust, they simultaneously opened fire on the people. My father was towards the center of the line with his two friends on either side. Out of reflex, or presence of mind, he ducked as soon as the firing began. One bullet grazed his neck, and he fell to the floor as his two friends and several other bodies piled on top of him. The terrorists then pumped another series of bullets into the heap of bodies to finish the job. This time a bullet hit my father in the back hip. Bent almost in double, crushed by the weight of the bodies above him, and suffocating in the torrent of blood rushing down on him from the various bodies my father held on for ten minutes while the terrorists left the area. When he finally had the courage to wiggle his arms he found that there were four other survivors in the room. They communicated to each other by touch as they were too afraid to make a sound. My father moved just enough to allow himself room to breathe and then lay still. The survivors passed over twelve hours lying still in the heap of bodies too afraid to move. They constantly heard gunfire and hand grenades going off in the other parts of the hotel. They feared that any noise would bring the terrorists back. After approximately twelve hours, the terrorists returned with a camera and flashlight and joked and laughed as they filmed what they thought was a pile of dead bodies. They then moved to the landing below where they set up explosives. On their departing, my father decided that it was too risky to remain where they were due to the explosives. Along with the other three survivors he climbed the rest of the stairwell, where they discovered a large HVAC plant room in which they decided to take shelter. They passed the rest of the siege hiding in this room trying to get the attention of the outside world by waving a makeshift flag out of the window. They drank sips of dirty water from the Air Conditioning unit to survive. Finally on Friday morning they were spotted by a commando rescue team that was storming the building and were evacuated to safety and taken to the hospital.”

After the first hour of blood letting, events become a little blurred as there are no eyewitnesses that have come forward as yet. What did the terrorists do next? Where did they go? One theory has it that they had a suite on the 18th floor as their headquarters from which they would emerge to shoot randomly and try to set fire to the various rooms in the hotel. Gunfire would be heard throughout the night from different parts of the hotel. At this time there were no commandos in the hotel and it seemed that the terrorists had complete freedom of action within the hotel.

Thursday

Again there is shooting and a fire starts in the Trident lobby but this is soon contained.

The pace of attack seems to slow during the day but with occasional bursts of shooting. By evening, commandos had gained access to Oberoi and were now searching for the terrorists.

All the residents were told to remain indoors – this was more through word of mouth and not by any public announcements. By this time, the internal phone system was working so that you could call out and to other rooms in the hotel.

This cat and mouse game between the commandos and the terrorists continued through the night.

Friday.

The NSG commandos cut off the Trident from the Oberoi and so the evacuation of the Trident guests could start at about 9 am.

Apparently the two terrorists were finally killed in the Oberoi but the NSG is not sure if there were still other terrorists still in hiding or if there were more bombs and booby traps that still existed. It is only by 3:30 pm that the process is completed and all the guests finally evacuated both from Trident and Oberoi.

The total casualty figures for Trident and Oberoi – 10 staff, 22 guests and 2 terrorists.

But this still does not account for any bodies that still may lie behind doors or in stairwells. Actually 2 bodies were found in a stairwell.

Many questions still remain even as this pieces together all I know from various accounts till date. Where were the terrorists after the initial shooting spree? How many were there? Did they drag guests out of their rooms to kill them? Did they have a list of whom they were targeting or was it all random? How many more did they kill?

In January 2009, the government of India came out with a report on these events. Some excerpts from this

“ Trident Hotel: The hotel has two wings, one named Oberoi and the other Trident. Together they have 877 rooms. At about 22:00 hrs, two terrorists (Abdul Rehman Chotta and Fahadullah) entered Trident Hotel through the main entrance and started firing indiscriminately. They crossed over to the Oberoi and
sprayed bullets into a restaurant. Two IEDs were exploded. The terrorists moved to the upper floors of the Oberoi, killing guests and staff who came in their way. Finally, they holed up on the 16th and 18th floors where they kept many guests hostage. NSG Commandos took charge of the operations on the morning of
November 27, 2008. The operations were concluded after 42 hours on the afternoon of November 28, 2008. The two terrorists were killed. In the attack on the Oberoi-Trident, 33 persons were killed. Police recovered two Kalashnikov rifles, six magazines of which two were loaded, a number of empty cases and hand grenade clips.”

The report also provided some excerpts from the actual cellphone conversation among the terrorists and their handlers in Pakistan:

“Oberoi Hotel : 27.11.2008 0350 hrs

Caller: Brother Abdul. The media is comparing your action to 9/11. One senior police officer has been killed.

Abdul Rehman: We are on the 10th/11th floor. We have five hostages.

Caller 2 (Kafa): Everything is being recorded by the media. Inflict the maximum damage. Keep fighting. Don't be taken alive.

Caller: Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims. Keep your phone switched on so that we can hear the gunfire.

Fahadullah: We have three foreigners including women. From Singapore and China.

Caller: Kill them.

(Voices of Fahadullah and Abdul Rehman directing hostages to stand in a line, and telling two Muslims to stand aside. Sound of gunfire. Cheering voices in background; Kafa hands telephone to Zarar)

Zarar: Fahad, find the way to go downstairs.”

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