US national charged over Mumbai attacks

US prosecutors have charged a 49-year-old Chicago resident with helping to plot the 2008 terrorist attacks in India's financial hub, Mumbai, in which 166 people were killed.

AFP - US prosecutors charged a Pakistani-American on Monday with helping in the 2008 Mumbai attacks by identifying possible targets and landing sites and reporting back to a Pakistan-based militant group.

David Headley is accused of making trips to Mumbai over a period of almost two years, even taking boat tours around the city's harbor to scope out landing sites for the attackers, who killed 166 people including six Americans.

He was arrested in October over a plot to attack a Danish newspaper that printed incendiary pictures of the Prophet Mohammed, but on Monday US justice officials released a raft of new charges related to the Mumbai attacks.

The Washington-born, Chicago resident stands accused of conspiring to bomb public places in India, of seeking to murder and maim persons in India and Denmark, and of aiding and abetting the murder of US citizens in India.

After agreeing to conduct surveillance for the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, Headley allegedly changed his name from Daood Gilani in February 2006 so he could pass in India as an American who was neither Muslim or Pakistani.

"He later made five extended trips to Mumbai -- in September 2006, February and September 2007, and April and July 2008 -- each time taking pictures and making videotapes of various targets, including those attacked in November 2008," according to a statement from the Justice Department.

"After each trip that Headley took... he allegedly returned to Pakistan, met with other co-conspirators and provided them with photographs, videos and oral descriptions of various locations," the statement said.

The November 27 attacks that also left hundreds wounded saw 10 heavily-armed Islamist gunmen storming India's financial capital, sparking a bloody, 60-hour siege shown live on television around the world.

The Justice Department statement said Headley had, "earlier this decade allegedly attended terrorism training camps in Pakistan maintained by Lashkar-e-Taiba."

He already stood accused, along with Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Canadian citizen born in Pakistan, of plotting an attack on a Danish newspaper that published incendiary cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005.

The US Justice Department, in announcing the new charges against Headley, also charged a third man Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, a retired major in the Pakistani military, over the Danish plot.

"Abdur Rehman... allegedly played the central role in communicating with Headley and facilitating contacts with other co-conspirators in Pakistan, including members of Lashkar," the charge sheet said.

The men allegedly spent at least a year working with Lashkar-e-Taiba on a plan to attack the offices of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Copenhagen and Arhus dubbed the "Mickey Mouse Project."

Headley admitted to the FBI after his arrest that he had been working since before 2006 with Lashkar, a Pakistan-based radical Islamic group that has long fought Indian rule in divided Kashmir.

A Lashkar-e-Taiba spokesman told AFP late last month that the group "strongly reject(s) claims that Headley and Rana are associated" with the militants.

"We strongly condemn it. All our members are locals (Kashmiris) and none of our activists are present in America," the group's spokesman Abdullah Ghaznavi said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Headley has also admitted to conducting two "surveillance" trips to Denmark in January and July 2009 in which he toured the offices of the Jyllands-Posten.

It was not immediately clear if he had admitted the latest charges related to the Mumbai attacks, but the Justice Department statement said he was cooperating with the ongoing investigations into both plots.

Headley, who was born in Washington, DC but lived for many years in Chicago, was arrested by the FBI on October 3 at Chicago O'Hare airport attempting to board a flight to Pakistan via Philadelphia.

"This case serves as a reminder that the terrorist threat is global in nature and requires constant vigilance at home and abroad," said David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security.

"We continue to share leads developed in this investigation with our foreign and domestic law enforcement partners as we work together on this important matter."

No date has yet been set for Headley's first hearing at a district court in Chicago.

 

Date created : 2009-12-07