Terror Trial Witness Ties Pakistan to 2008 Attacks

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Terror Trial Witness Ties Pakistan to 2008 Attacks

CHICAGO — The government’s leading witness in a high-profile terrorism trial told jurors here Monday that the group behind the 2008 attack on Mumbai, India, had ties to Pakistan’s intelligence service.

In testimony that prosecutors said offered a “rare look” inside a major terrorist plot, David C. Headley said he had trained with the Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba between 2002 and 2005 in preparation for scouting locations to attack in India. In 2006, Mr. Headley said, he met a member of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency who offered to provide financial support for that surveillance.

In testimony so painstaking that the judge and some jurors seemed to nod off at the mundane details of a plot that left 163 people dead, Mr. Headley described how he changed his name and used his American passport to portray himself alternately as a tourist or a businessman, concealing his Muslim faith and his Pakistani roots so he could travel easily across borders. He said he provided hours of video of potential targets in Mumbai to his handlers in both ISI and Lashkar.

“I understood these groups operated under the umbrella of the ISI,” he said, referring to Lashkar. “They coordinated with each other.”

In her opening statements, the federal prosecutor, Sarah Streicker, echoed that comment, saying that both Lashkar and Mr. Headley’s ISI contacts wanted him to “conduct surveillance on targets in India.”

Mr. Headley’s testimony comes at a time of deepening concerns about Pakistan’s links to Islamic militants, less than a month after the United States discovered Osama bin Laden hiding out in a prominent Pakistani garrison town. Ms. Streicker did not make clear on Monday whether the government believed the Mumbai attack was plotted at the highest levels of ISI, or had the support of only a handful of rogue agents.

Still, by presenting Mr. Headley as its lead witness, the government was at least tacitly supporting his story and asking jurors to convict a defendant based largely on his testimony.

The defendant is a Chicago businessman, Tahawwur Rana, who is accused of providing support for the Mumbai attacks. In court on Monday, Mr. Rana appeared in a drab olive sport coat and smiled dolefully at members of his family seated in the front row, as if trying to console them.

Prosecutors say Mr. Rana, who runs an immigration service here, allowed Mr. Headley to portray himself as an executive of the company and open an office in Mumbai as a cover for his terrorist activities.

Defense attorneys said that Mr. Rana had no idea Mr. Headley, a friend with whom he attended an elite Pakistani military academy, was plotting with terrorists and that he had been duped. One of Mr. Rana’s lawyers is Charles Swift, who successfully represented Bin Laden’s driver in the landmark Supreme Court case that struck down the military commissions President George W. Bush had established to try Guantánamo Bay detainees.

In his opening statement on Monday, Mr. Swift talked more about Mr. Headley, who pleaded guilty in an attempt to avoid the death penalty, than he did his own client, describing Mr. Headley’s history of deceit, including multiple marriages and working as an informer for the Drug Enforcement Administration while he was trafficking heroin into the country from Pakistan.

Mr. Swift said Mr. Headley was working as a D.E.A. informer when he started training with Lashkar, balancing his work for the militants, ISI and the D.E.A. the same way he balanced three wives.

“David Headley was living multiple lives,” Mr. Swift said. “And he was very good at it.”

Wearing a rumpled sweat suit and with his gray hair shaved close to his head, Mr. Headley appeared far from swashbuckling. He spoke so softly that the judge asked several times for him to keep his voice up. His answers often seemed more coached than spontaneous. And he became testy with prosecutors in a way that sometimes made it hard tell which side he was on.

Still, the case is likely to hinge on whether the jury believes his account.

On Tuesday, the defense is expected to begin its effort to poke holes in his credibility.

Calling Mr. Headley a “master manipulator,” Mr. Swift told the jury that this trial is not the first time the witness has pleaded guilty in order to avoid severe sentences. Court records show he previously pleaded guilty and testified against friends in two drug convictions more than a decade ago.

“I am convinced,” Mr. Swift told the jury, “that the lies and manipulations stop here.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/world/asia/24headley.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Rana trial&st=cse

 

[Ammyy]

---------- Post added at 07:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:21 PM ----------

[/COLOR]Spy agency 'planned' Mumbai attack

PAKISTAN government's spy agency was involved in planning the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, a US court has heard.
David Coleman Headley, a US-Pakistani who has already pleaded guilty to helping plan the massacre, told a Chicago court Pakistan's notorious Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) supported the Kashmir-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba and ''co-ordinated'' with the banned militants in the lead-up to the attacks in India's largest city.
Headley's evidence compounds the embarrassment for Pakistan's military over a massive security failure on Sunday night when more than a dozen Taliban militants stormed a naval base in Karachi, killing 10 security personnel.


Read more: Spy agency 'planned' Mumbai attack

 

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Pakistan intelligence service coordinated with Mumbai attackers

Pakistan's intelligence service coordinated with the terrorist group that carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks where more than 160 people were killed, according to an American who pleaded guilty to involvement in the bombings.

David Headley, born Daood Gilani, was giving evidence at the start of the Chicago trial of Tahawwur Rana, a Pakistani-born Canadian. Headley avoided the death penalty by admitting carrying out reconnaissance of targets in Mumbai for Lashkar-e-Taiba.
He appeared to be speaking in general terms rather than about the Mumbai attacks in particular and gave no specifics about the relationship between Islamabad and the terrorist group.
Headley said he had received weapons and leadership training with the group from 2000 and when its commanders began talking about a possible attack in India he "suggested that I change my name and make a new passport to make it easy to enter India undetected". He said that when he first started training with the militant group more than a decade ago it was his understanding that the gorup and Pakistan's ISI coordinated with each other.
Rana has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers insist their client was simply duped by Headley. The two, both 50, were long-time friends who met at one of Pakistan's most prestigious military boarding schools and stayed in touch as adults.
In opening statements, Sarah Streicker, assistant US Attorney, confirmed that Headley would testify after cooperating with the US government following his guilty plea to taking photos and videos of targets in Mumbai before the attacks that killed 160 people over three days in India's largest city.

Pakistan intelligence service coordinated with Mumbai attackers - Telegraph

 

[Ammyy]

Mumbai terror attack: US trial puts Pakistan spy agency in the dock

Allegations that Pakistan's intelligence service was involved in the Mumbai terror attacks will be scrutinised in an American court case starting on Monday when the man who helped plan the 2008 strikes testifies against his alleged accomplice.

David Headley, a Pakistani-American businessman who has confessed to his involvement in the attacks, will be the star witness in the trial of Tahawwur Rana, his childhood friend, in Chicago.

Rana is charged with providing material support for terrorism in the assaults, which killed 166 people, as well as a plot in Denmark that was never carried out. Opening arguments in the case, based on the deaths of six Americans in Mumbai, will begin on Monday.

The case has drawn international attention because Headley's testimony is expected to reinforce allegations that Pakistan plays a double game in the fight against terrorism. Its success will depend largely on how the jury views Headley, 50, who is said to have juggled relationships with multiple wives, terrorist groups and intelligence agencies.

Headley is a former informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He pleaded guilty last year to conducting reconnaissance for the Mumbai attacks and for the Danish plot. His confessions painted a devastating portrait of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) – he says ISI officers helped the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist group plot the commando-style attacks on Mumbai.

Rana's defence will centre on the ISI links. His lawyers say Headley duped Rana into thinking he was helping an ISI espionage operation in India, then betrayed him to escape the death penalty. The defence will argue Rana had no idea Headley was plotting mass murder.

"They are using a whale to catch a minnow," said defence attorney Charles Swift, calling Headley "a master manipulator".

Prosecutors recently raised the political stakes by indicting a suspected ISI officer for the murders in Mumbai. The officer, identified only as Major Iqbal, allegedly oversaw Headley's scouting in India.

The decision to indict Iqbal was made at high levels in Washington, sending a signal from Barack Obama's administration, which had expressed frustration about Pakistan's reliability even before Osama bin Laden was found and killed in Abbottabad.

"I think [the indictment] shows the government believes Headley when he says his handler was an ISI officer," said James Kreindler, a former federal prosecutor who is suing the Pakistani spy agency in New York on behalf of the Mumbai victims and their families in a separate case.

"At some point in time there is not going to be any doubt whatsoever that the ISI coordinated the attack with Lashkar."The indictment does not mention the ISI, part of a calculated low-key approach, according to an Obama administration official who requested anonymity because of the pending trial. But the prosecutors are likely to address the allegations about the ISI, especially as the defence has emphasised them.

"The decision not to name the ISI does not reflect second thoughts about the evidence," the official said. "There are no second thoughts about the evidence."

The prosecution's case is based on a secretive international investigation by the FBI and about 30,000 pages of court documents, most of them classified. Headley's testimony is backed by corroborating evidence including other witnesses and communications intercepts. If there is strong evidence that the ISI helped kill Americans, it would inflict further damage on an endangered alliance with Pakistan into which Washington has poured billions of dollars.

Pakistani officials deny any links to terrorism and question Headley's credibility because of his past as a double agent and criminal.

The Pakistani major and five of the six other alleged leaders of the Mumbai attacks charged in Chicago remain at large. The FBI has photos of some of them, intercepts of their voices and emails, and information about their whereabouts, but Pakistani authorities have done little to pursue the fugitives, US officials say. Pakistan's prosecution of several Lashkar chiefs arrested in 2009, including one now under US indictment, has stalled.

Rana, a doctor by training, met Headley when they attended an elite military school in Pakistan. He is the lowest-ranking suspect and is said to have let Headley use his immigration consulting firm as a cover overseas.

In her first media interview, Rana's wife, Samraz, who also has a medical degree, said she met Headley in the 1990s after she emigrated to the US. Although he was a convicted heroin dealer and recovering addict, he charmed her conservative family, she said from their bungalow near Devon Avenue, the heart of Chicago's South Asian community.

The bespectacled 48-year-old mother of three teenagers smiled wearily as she recalled Headley's relationship with her children.

"He was like a gateway to American culture for us," she said. "He was like a second father for my kids. My kids would say, 'he's cool, this guy'. He was taking them to the movies, Chuck E Cheese, all this fun stuff … He talked to me like a brother. He knows what I liked. He knows what my husband liked. He knows what my children like … He has different faces."

Headley, formerly Daood Sayed Gilani, was born to a mother from a rich Philadelphia family and a father who was a renowned, politically influential Pakistani broadcaster. Headley told investigators that he had a distant Pakistani relative who was a former deputy director of the ISI and an army general, according to Indian and US officials. If that link is confirmed, it could help explain why the agency later recruited Headley and how he had access to senior officers and militant chiefs.

At 17, he returned to the United States, where he managed bars and owned a video rental store. Multilingual and gregarious, he has shown a con man's gift for winning over accomplices, investigators and romantic conquests.

"He was a tall, handsome guy," Samraz Rana said. "He was wearing very expensive clothes and, I mean, he was really impressive."

After a 1997 arrest for heroin smuggling, Headley became a prized DEA informant who targeted Pakistani traffickers.

Immediately after the 11 September 2001 attacks, the DEA directed him to collect intelligence on terrorists as well as drugs. That December, the US government ended his probation early and rushed him to Pakistan, where he began training in Lashkar terror camps weeks later, according to court documents and his associates.

Some federal officials say he remained an informant for at least three more years until 2005, but the DEA says he was deactivated in early 2002.

Between 2001 and 2008, federal authorities were warned six times by his wives and associates that he was involved in terrorism. None of the resulting inquiries yielded anything. The FBI and CIA say he never worked for them.

Headley's personal life has also been dramatic. He has four children, including a son named Osama with a Pakistani wife from an arranged marriage in 1999. But he has been married to three other women and several of those relationships overlapped.

At times, Headley has worn a full beard and traditional garb and expressed warlike beliefs, quoting the Qur'an, praising al-Qaida and declaring his hatred for India. But he has often gone clean-shaven and behaved like a high-rolling entrepreneur with a taste for champagne and luxury.

After he began training with Lashkar, he joked with his third wife, a New York makeup artist, that their pet dog could be a good "jihadi dog," according to a close associate. Hardcore extremists shun dogs because they see them as un-Islamic and unclean, making dog ownership a possible cover for terrorists.

When the DEA arrested Headley in 1987 and 1997, Rana put up his house as bond. When the Ranas ran into financial trouble in 2005, Headley came to the rescue with a loan of more than $60,000 (£37,000), Rana's wife said.

"We were like almost at the border of bankruptcy," she said. "So my husband he became more close to him. And he said: 'Oh, he is my true friend because he helped me at this time when I really need money'."

But Headley had traits that made her uneasy. She said her husband told her Headley had once used an elderly aunt to smuggle drugs on a flight overseas, hiding the package in her pocket without her knowledge.

In 2006, the ISI recruited Headley in Pakistan, according to his confession. In addition to Iqbal, his trainer and handler, he said he met ISI officers named Major Samir Ali, Lt Col Hamza and Col Shah. After specialised ISI training, he undertook two years of missions in India directed by Iqbal and Sajid Mir, a Lashkar chief who is the suspected project manager of the plot.

Mir's voice was caught on wiretaps overseeing the three-day slaughter in Mumbai by phone. Some US and European anti-terror officials believe Mir once belonged to the military or ISI; others say he only had close ties to the security forces.

Iqbal is said to have assigned Headley to gather military intelligence, giving him about $28,000 to establish an office of Rana's firm in Mumbai as a cover and for other expenses, the indictment says.

Samraz Rana insists her husband had no idea about the plot. The Ranas travelled to Mumbai, where she has family, days before the attack in November 2008.

"It's a zero per cent chance that my husband is involved in this thing," she said. "My relatives are there … I was there. My husband was there. We [could have been] killed in that attack."

The defence, however, will have to explain wiretaps in which Rana appears to praise the Mumbai masterminds. Evidence indicates he communicated with Iqbal and helped Headley maintain his cover in Denmark in January 2009 by sending an email to an advertising representative at the Jyllands Posten newspaper, which Lashkar targeted because it had published caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, according to the indictment.

Iqbal met Headley at least twice about the Denmark plot, expressing enthusiasm about attacking the newspaper, according to Headley's account. The officer cut off contact with Headley when Mir, the lead plotter, backed away from the operation in March 2009, documents say. But Headley continued meeting and communicating with Shah and Samir Ali as the Denmark plot was taken over by al-Qaida, according to officials and an Indian court document.

Shortly before the Mumbai attack, Headley had brought his Pakistani wife and children to Chicago. They lived with the Ranas for 20 days before moving into a nearby apartment.

"They become very close to my kids," Samraz Rana said. "And the wife was nice. And we have like sort of family relationship at that time … Dave was not here, he only sent his family. So we were taking care of his family."

During this period, documents show, Headley was spending most of his time in Pakistan, where he had a Moroccan wife. The Ranas paid rent for Headley's family as part of the strict conditions he had imposed for repaying the money he had loaned them, she said.

The FBI arrested Headley and Rana in October 2009. A DEA agent who had handled Headley when he was a drug informant was present when investigators brought Headley in, perhaps in a strategy to induce co-operation. Headley quickly did what he had done in the past: he changed sides and spent weeks detailing his role in the Mumbai massacre. Despite Headley's guilty plea, Samraz Rana finds it difficult to believe that her jovial family friend helped plan the carnage of Mumbai. She recalled an anecdote her husband told about their military school days, when Headley would avoid morning prayers.

"Dave, he knocks on all the doors of students and he says, 'Get up, get up, it's time for prayer'," she said. "And then when everybody gets up, he went to his room and went to sleep, you know. So he was laughing. He was like that."

Now, though, Samraz Rana sees Headley as a predator.

"He just thinks about himself," she said. "I think he [studies] human beings more as compared to the ordinary person. He can understand what [someone] likes and he changes himself according to that… Now I realise what intention he had."

Mumbai terror attack: US trial puts Pakistan spy agency in the dock | World news | The Guardian

 

[Mr.Ryu]

This is what we where telling for all these years but no one got the point and this congress dont have balls to roll freely and demand from pak.