Indian Police Arrest 2 Men for Providing SIM Cards to Mumbai Terrorists
By Will Park on Sunday, December 7th, 2008 at 1:38 PM PST In Announcements, Security
For every terrorist attack, there’s a black market dealer providing the required gear. In the recent Mumbai attacks, the critical piece of equipment turned out to be web-connected cellphones. To that end, Mumbai officials have announced that they’ve arrested two Indian men accused of providing SIM cards to the Mumbai terrorists.
Rajeev Kumar, a top Calcutta police official, says that police arrested two men – one in Calcutta and the other in New Delhi. Kumar identified the two men as Tausif Rehman and Mikhtar Ahmed. It is believed that Rehman bought 20 SIM cards, 13 of which were registered to dead people, in Calcutta. Rehman then passed the SIM cards on to Ahmed. “Some of these cards” were used by the gunmen in the Mumbai attacks that occurred November 26.
In a world where citizen and professional journalists flood the wires with almost real-time information about an event, web-enabled mobile phones have proven their worth to terrorists. The Mumbai attackers kept a close eye on police response to their terrorist efforts by reading news updates on their BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) smartphones. The cellphones needed SIM cards in order to work, in turn creating a new black market ripe for exploitation by terrorists.
[Via: CellularNews]
