An Indian court began the trial of three people charged over last year's terrorist attacks in Mumbai that left 164 people dead.
The lone surviving gunman, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, appeared before Judge M.L. Tahiliyani today via a video link from his cell in a Mumbai jail and said he would accept a lawyer appointed by the government to defend him, public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said in a telephone interview from Mumbai.
Kasab is charged with "waging a war against India and murder," Nikam said. Two alleged accomplices, Sabahuddin Mohammad and Fahim Ansari, who face more than a dozen charges, also appeared via video link. The judge will decide on the next date for a hearing later today, Nikam said.
India has charged 47 people, including 45 Pakistani nationals, with planning and executing the Nov. 26-29 assault. The government in New Delhi has blamed the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba for the attacks and is demanding the extradition of suspects.
The attacks interrupted a five-year peace process between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947.
The trial will shift from the Mumbai court to a courtroom inside the prison where Kasab is held within three weeks, Nikam said.
Public Pressure
"The court must come out with a verdict as soon as possible," Suba Chandran, deputy director of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, said in a telephone interview from New Delhi. Public pressure for a verdict means the case "should not drag on."
India alleges that 10 gunmen entered Mumbai on speedboats. Armed with guns, grenades and explosives, they attacked 13 sites across the city, including two luxury hotel complexes, a Jewish center, a cafe and a railway station. Prosecutors filed an 11,280-page charge-sheet last month.
Pakistan last month acknowledged for the first time that its territory was used to plot the attacks and said eight suspects have been charged.
A legal team from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is scheduled to arrive in India within the next two days to hold discussions with Law Ministry officials and will frame its own charges, the Press Trust of India reported. Six U.S. nationals were killed in the assault.