A film by Daniel Reed. 48 minutes. 2009

Terror in Mumbai presents a moment-by-moment account of the horrific attacks through interview with survivors and Indian police officials, archival news coverage, extensive video surveillance footage of the terrorists in action, and chilling audio excerpts of cell-phone conversations intercepted by security forces. The phone intercepts provide a grotesque running commentary as the controllers, watching events unfold on live TV, direct the gunmen, telling them where the security forces are, which of their hostages should be killed and how to do it.

With the killers wounded and asking what to do next, the tapes reveal the controllers calmly urgin them to fight to the deat and now allow themselves to be taken alive.

While the Mumbai attacts differed in many ways from the Al Qaeda assault on the U.S. on 9/11, the personal motives of Laskar-e-Taiba terrorists bear some of the same hallmarks, notably the belief that there would be material wealth for their families and heavenly glory for themselves if they died for the cause of jihad. What remains unclear is how this quest for holiness meshed with the indiscriminate nature of the killings, which mowed down Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

2010 Bafta Award Winning

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