US intelligence officials helped India and Pakistan swap top secret intelligence in the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks in November, the Washington Post reported Monday.
The intelligence sharing between the two countries, whose relationship is often shaky at best, was facilitated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) beginning just days after the attacks that killed 170 people over three days, dpa reported.
The Washington Post quoted US and foreign government sources in the story, who acknowledged that those efforts helped clear the way for Islamabad last week to admit that the attacks were partly planned on its soil.
Pakistan also said a criminal case had been registered against the suspects, many of whom were already in Pakistani police custody.
The swapped information included communications intercepts and physical evidence about the planning and execution of the three-day killing rampage.
Indian and Pakistani officials shared their information with the CIA, which vetted its content and helped fill in blanks, the Post reported, quoting Pakistani and US officials.
Last week, Rehman Malik, a top Pakistani Interior Ministry official, told reporters in Islamabad that a trawler transported the attackers from Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi to Indian waters and the men then used an inflatable boat to reach the port city of Mumbai.
The suspects in custody have told authorities about the preparations and their training for the three-day gun-and-bomb strikes and how they were carried out, Malik said. Pakistani officials had seized the trawler, called the al-Fauz.
New Delhi claimed that all 10 attackers came from Pakistan and the carnage was planned by the Pakistani-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
Islamabad initially denied any link to the attacks but later accepted that the lone surviving attacker, who is in Indian custody, is a Pakistani.
Investigators found that a Pakistani national, Javed Iqbal, arranged internet calls for communication between the attackers in Mumbai and their handlers in Pakistan from Spain. The provider of the facility is based in the United States, Malik said.
A case against eight suspects has been lodged under anti-terrorism and cyber-crime laws for abetting, conspiring and facilitating criminal acts. Six of the accused, including Iqbal, are in police custody while two were at large.
Among the detained is LeT head Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, who Malik identified as the mastermind of the Mumbai attacks.