Mumbai attacks suspect 'prime target' for extremists
Mohammed Ajmal Amir Iman, accused of being part of a 10-man group that attacked the Indian city of Mumbai, was ripe for recruitment by Islamist militants, police and security experts say.
"He fits the profile if you look at the terrorists recruited by Lashkar-e-Taiba," said Wilson John, senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi and a specialist in extremist groups.
"They come from lower-middle class or poor families. They're not entirely uneducated, just a little bit educated, they're unemployed and looking for a job. They're not religiously inclined but they can be brainwashed.
"He was a prime target," he told AFP.
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is accused of masterminding last November's attacks that killed more than 160 people and wounded over 300 others.
The few biographical details that have come to light so far show that Iman, also referred to as Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, was born and brought up in Faridkot, in the Punjab region of Pakistan.
His father Mohammed Amir Iman ran a food stall in the village, and his mother was called Noor, Britain's The Observer newspaper said in December, citing the local electoral roll.
Iman dropped out of school in 2000 and worked as a labourer in the eastern city of Lahore until 2005, according to the defendant's apparent "confession" to police, which was widely published here in December.
But two different versions have emerged of how he was recruited by LeT.
His "confession" said he and a colleague turned to the group for weapons training after deciding to embark on a life of crime.
A report in the Mumbai Mirror newspaper published in March and purporting to be a transcript of his questioning about an hour after his arrest, says he claimed his father duped him into it.
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