The Almagor Terror Victim Association asked Thursday for volunteers to gather information about the 250 terrorists scheduled for release December 15th. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed last week to release the terrorists as a gesture to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Almagor asks volunteers to send an email to victims1@gmail.com . Volunteers will be asked to go over information about the terrorists scheduled for release and collate a series of facts in a report.

The Almagor Terror Victims Association and the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel petitioned the high Court of Justice against the government’s decision to free 250 Palestinian prisoners.

The groups say that the decision should be made by the next government, rather than by the current transition government. The high Court is expected to hear the petition Monday morning.

The Almagor Terror Victims’ Association is hoping to block the government from implementing its decision Sunday to release 230 terrorists as a “goodwill” gesture to the Palestinian Authority. The original list included 250 terrorists, but 20 Gaza-based terrorists were removed.

The list of names of the terrorists who are to be freed were published Sunday afternoon on the website of the Israel Prison Authority.

The Ministerial Prisoners’ Release Committee rubber-stamped Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s decision to free the terrorists in another gesture to bolster the government of PA Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas. The release is scheduled to take place during the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha, the Festival of the Sacrifice.

Almagor Director Meir Indor issued a statement to the media expressing his frustration and outrage in a warning that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was once again embarking on an exercise in futility.

“After repeated gestures to the Palestinian Authority in which hundreds of terrorists were released with no exchange or reward to the Israeli government, Prime Minister Olmert has promised again to release 250 terrorists to the Palestinian Authority,” he said.

“According to former Israeli government legal advisor Elyakam Rubinstein, overall, 80% of the terrorists who were released up to 2007 resumed their terror activities,” he noted.

More to the point, he said, 180 Israeli citizens have been murdered by released terrorists since 2000. “That number does not include those who were killed during the Intifada, which was led and supported by released terrorists,” he said, adding, “These days, hundreds of terrorists are being released every month or two, as political “gestures,” or as part of exchange deals, usually as a result of external pressures on the government. Terror organizations see this pressure and use it for their own benefit,” he said.

The most recent demand by the Hamas terrorist organization in exchange for the return of kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit has been the release of 1,400 terrorists, “including those who planned the biggest terror attack during the second Intifada and are responsible for the deaths of dozens,” warned Indor. “Right now, the list of 1,400 includes 300 “heavy” prisoners, in the words of the security officials.”

The reference means prisoners with “blood on their hands,” who have actually committed one or more violent acts against Jews, many of which were outright murders, some of which were multiple terror attacks.

Indor said his group is also working to create a formal lobby in the Knesset in order to pressure MKs into voting against the release of terrorists.

Fresh evidence unearthed late last week by investigators in India indicated that the Mumbai attacks were directed from at least two Pakistani cities by leaders of the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, according to the Associated Press.

Indian and American intelligence officials have already identified a Lashkar operative, who goes by the name Yusuf Muzammil, as a mastermind of the attacks. On Thursday, Indian investigators named one of the most well-known senior figures in Lashkar, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.

The names of both men came from the interrogations of the one surviving attacker, Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, 21, according to police officials in Mumbai.

Karachi-Lahore-Mumbai Connection

While Muzammil appears to have served as a control officer in Lahore, Pakistan, Lakhvi, his boss and the operational commander of Lashkar, worked from Karachi, a southern Pakistani port city, said investigators in Mumbai.

It now appears that both men were in contact with their charges as they sailed to Mumbai from Karachi, and then continued guiding the attacks as they unfolded, directing the assaults and possibly providing information about the police and military response in India.

Some of the calls between the commanders and the terrorists appeared to be conversations about who would live and who would die among the gunmen’s hostages, according to an official who interviewed survivors and a report by security consultants with contacts among the investigators.

An Indian terrorist was also involved in scouting targets for the plot against Mumbai, authorities said.

Torture of Victims?

Also Thursday, police said there were signs that some of the six victims of the attack on a Jewish center may have been tortured. “The victims were strangled,” said Rakesh Maria, a senior Mumbai police official. “There were injuries noticed on the bodies that were not from firing.”

However, members of Israeli rescue group ZAKA, which had a team in Mumbai said it was impossible to tell if the bodies had been abused, because no autopsies were conducted in accordance with Jewish tradition.

Rice: Pakistan Cooperating

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters that “the Pakistani Government has made clear its intention to cooperate” with the response to the terror attacks, “because Pakistan also is at war with these extremists.”

“That’s a point that President Zardari has made many times, that extremists have wreaked havoc in Pakistan,” she said, on board the jet that was taking her to Pakistan Thursday. “And so the global threat of extremism and terrorism has to be met by all states, taking a very tough and hard line,” she said.

The Pakistani response to the Mumbai massacres “needs to be a robust response, and it needs to be one that is effective in both helping the international community, the United States, which lost citizens in this attack, the UK, which lost citizens in this attack and, of course, India, to respond to this situation so that the perpetrators can be brought to justice,” she added.

Some Tough Questions

Almagor, an Israeli terror victims’ group, praised India for reacting with military force to the terror attacks. “The Indian government understands that capitulating to terrorism only means that there will be even more victims in the long run,” the group stated.

However, the group raised a series of questions regarding the Indian raids on Chabad House and other targets. Among these were:

1. Was there an intelligence command post in Israel or in the Consulate in India that collected information on Chabad House from previous visitors? Did the command post assist the Indians with vital information?
2. Why didn’t the Indians use ‘selective fire’ as accepted in units that must operate in a terrorist attack with hostages?
3. Why was the cleansing operation carried out gradually and not by deploying numerous forces simultaneously, as is generally mandated in scenarios involving hostages, so as to save the lives of the abductees?
4. Why didn’t the Indians censor the online filming of their operatives climbing on the roof of the building? The entire world had access to those films including, evidently, the planners and commanders of the terrorists who were able to communicate with the terrorists inside via phones and walkie-talkies.

“We must not agree to bury the truth together with the victims; we must not allow the whitewashing of the facts under guise of diplomatic good manners,” the group stated.

“We may well be viewing the beginning of a trend of terrorist acts abroad. Thus it is vital that we draw accurate conclusions and set guidelines for cooperation with foreign governments in the war against terror,” it concluded.

The Almagor terror victims group has called on Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Welfare Minister Yitzchak Herzog and Minister of the Interior Meir Sheetrit to grant posthumous citizenship to Norma Shvarzblat Rabinovich. Rabinovich, a Mexican citizen, was planning to make aliya (immigrate) to Israel this week to be with two of her three grown children. She was murdered in the terrorist attack on the Mumbai Chabad house.

Granting citizenship to Rabinovich would leave the state with almost no commitment to her family, Almagor head Meir Indor pointed out, and would have symbolic meaning to her children. In addition, he said, “It would send a symbolic message to Jews around the world that Israel is a Jewish state.”