Meet Mr Sajid Mir - Pakistan’s new jihadi superstar

Washington: People who came in contact with him described him as a man who moved around with a pistol on his hips, two bodyguards and a driver, a person treated deferentially even by the Pakistan Army.

High ranking US law enforcement officials describe him as ''too powerful'' and ''too well connected'' for even the Pakistani establishment to go after. Meet Mr Sajid Mir – a man deeply embedded into the Pakistani Jihadi woodwork, and only now beginning to emerge as its new superstar.

In a report, co-published by The Washington Post and public interest journalism group ProPublica, Sajid Mir has been revealed as the real mastermind of Pakistan's state sponsored-terror machine, the man who pulled the strings at the end of which dangled the likes of Daood Gilani a.k.a David Coleman Headley.

So far Sajid Mir has been a footnote, along with a certain 'Major Iqbal', in the terror attack now referred to as 'Mumbai 26/11'. The five-month long investigation by ProPublica reveals the high profile nature of the man that the Americans identify as 'Sajid Mir' and Indian investigators refer to as 'Sajid Majid'.

It now appears that even as the Mumbai 26/11 attckers approached the city's shoreline in a dinghy, after disembarking from a commandeered fishing boat, Sajid Mir and five others, including ISI and Pakistan Army operative 'Maj Iqbal', made themselves comfortable in a safe house, or a hotel, somewhere in Karachi or Lahore and began to direct the operations.

Using the alias 'Wassi', Mir oversaw the assault on various targets. ''The Lashkar-i-Taiba terrorist group had made Mir the project manager of its biggest strike ever, the crowning achievement of his career as a holy warrior,'' the report says.