X-POSTED - Rana Trial
X-POSTED - The Curious Case of Daood Gilani alias David Headley & co
X-POSTED - India-US Strategic News and Discussion
Canadian’s trial in Mumbai terror case could link Pakistan, terror group
Sophia Tareen, Associated Press
CHICAGO—A Chicago courtroom could become the unlikely venue for revealing alleged connections between the terrorist group blamed for the 2008 rampage that killed more than 160 people in Mumbai and Pakistan’s main intelligence agency, which has come under increased scrutiny following Osama bin Laden’s killing.
Jury selection begins Monday in the case against businessman Tahawwur Rana, a Canadian national who has lived in Chicago for years.
He is accused of helping a former boarding school friend serve as a scout for the militant group that carried out the three-day attack in India’s largest city. Though the accusations against Rana are fairly straightforward, the implications of the trial could be enormous.
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http://www.thestar.com/news/world/artic ... group?bn=1
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NIA to finalise charges against Rana after US trial
New Delhi, May 16, (IANS):
India's main terror probe wing, the National Investigation Agency (NIA), would soon file charges against David Headley and Tahawwur Rana after the latter's trial concludes in a US court for his alleged role in the 26/11 Mumbai carnage, sources said Monday.
Pakistani-born Rana is set to appear in for the trial in Chicago that India is closely monitoring because it may unmask the links between Pakistan's spy agency ISI and terrorists.
The court proceedings, which Indian investigators expect could throw more light on the Mumbai attack conspiracy, could come handy for the NIA in finalising its chargesheet against the Headley and Rana, sources said.
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http://www.deccanherald.com/content/161 ... -rana.html
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Tahawwur Rana's trial to begin in Chicago today, could expose ISI role in 26/11
PTI | May 16, 2011, 11.00am IST
CHICAGO: The trial of Pakistan-born Canadian citizen Tahawwur Rana, co-accused with David Headley in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, could reveal ISI's links to terrorists and any evidence of spy agency's "malfeasance" would worsen US-Pakistan relations.
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"What he discloses could deepen suspicions that Pakistani spies are connected to terrorists and could potentially worsen relations between Washington and Islamabad," New York Times reported.
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"Any new evidence of ISI malfeasance that emerges from the trial will reverberate in Washington," the daily said.
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A growing chorus on US Capitol Hill argues that the discovery of bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad and the evidence in Headley's case leave no doubt that the ISI and its Pakistani military overseers have played a cynical double game with the United States, the Times said.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/worl ... 354267.cms
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Terror suspect Tahawwur Rana in Chicago court
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Chuck Goudie
May 11, 2011 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- A Chicago man accused of committing terrorist crimes 8,000 miles away was in federal court Wednesday in Chicago.
In this Intelligence Report: The government is gearing up for the most significant terrorism trial ever in Chicago.
Wednesday's court appearance by Tahawwur Rana was intended to smooth some legal wrinkles in a contentious and complicated case. This trial has far-reaching implications, not only in the U.S. war on terror, but also in relations between the United States, Pakistan and India-- and between those two nations themselves, a relationship already frayed and on edge.
<snip> INCLUDES TV VIDEO REPORT
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?sectio ... id=8125933
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Trial Raises Questions On Pakistan's Terrorism Ties
by Dina Temple-Raston
May 13, 2011
A terrorism trial set to begin in Chicago next week could end up further inflaming tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan. The case involves Tahawwur Rana, who was arrested two years ago and charged with conspiring with others in the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. Jury selection in his case begins Monday, but the question of Rana's guilt or innocence has taken a back seat to a bigger issue: Pakistan's role in the deadly attacks.
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"I can't remember a case in terms of either its substance or timing that has such potential grave political impact," said Juan Zarate, a terrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former member of the Bush administration. "In a very real way, you have the Pakistani intelligence services, and perhaps the military, on trial here for its potential complicity in the 2008 attacks — and that's in the wake of all the questions that have arisen about Pakistan complicity in harboring bin Laden. This is a volatile mix coming at a volatile time."
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"I think people will be left wondering why the United States not looked closer at the ISI and everything that is going on in Pakistan," said Charles Swift, Rana's defense attorney.
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"For the first time, America has confirmed what India has been saying all along: That the 10 men that came onto Mumbai shores were not acting alone; they were trained and tutored by the ISI — that the entire operation was monitored from Islamabad," said the anchor of the Indian news channel TimesNow. "We knew it."
Swift, the defense lawyer, says he expects the courtroom will be filled with Indian reporters, and now, in the wake of the bin Laden raid, the U.S. media are going to be there in force, too. All of that attention might explain something prosecutors have just done: NPR has learned that a couple of days ago, they asked for a special hearing — something called a Section 6, SIPA hearing, in which the prosecution and the defense hash out what can be safely said in court without revealing classified information.
Calling a SIPA hearing this late in a case is an unusual maneuver. Those kinds of details are usually settled months in advance. Amid all the sturm und drang of the past two weeks,
prosecutors may have had some second thoughts about what they want to reveal in court.
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/13/136254210 ... orism-ties
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Perfidious Pakistan
By Jed Babbin on 5.16.11 @ 6:09AM [Jed Babbin served as a Deputy Undersecretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush. He is the author of several bestselling books including Inside the Asylum and In the Words of Our Enemies.]
Last weekend, Pakistan's parliament... <snip> ... was called to debate "the situation arising from unilateral U.S. action in Abbottabad." The Pakistanis declared that continuation of the U.S. drone attacks was "unacceptable" and resolved that, "Such drone attacks must stop forthwith, failing which the government will be constrained to consider taking necessary steps including withdrawal of [the] transit facility allowed to NATO."
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What to do about Pakistan? There may be little we can do, and what little there is we must undertake without delay. To understand why Pakistan is so committed to terrorism requires the observation of one key fact:
terrorism is, and has been for decades, the weapon of choice Pakistan uses against India in the dispute over Kashmir. The large, rich province of Kashmir has a Muslim majority and was left in India's hands when the British pulled out in August 1947. The two nations have repeatedly fought conventional wars over Kashmir and two years ago came to the brink of nuclear war.
Unable to wrest Kashmir from India, Pakistan chose terrorism as its strategy to undermine India in Kashmir and force its withdrawal. Pakistan-based terrorists have committed assassinations, airline hijackings and many bombing attacks against Indian targets. When India confronts Pakistan, the latter denies its obvious complicity and refuses to take action against the terror networks it harbors.
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Last March, India gave the Pakistani government a list of fifty terrorists operating from Pakistan believed to have been involved in attacks, some going back twenty years. Among them reportedly were Dawood Ibrahim (wanted in connection with bombings in Mumbai in 1993), LeT chieftain Hafiz Saeed and LeT commander Azam Cheema as well as Illyas Kashmiri, one of the leaders of the Pakistani Taliban. Pakistan has not, and certainly will not, surrender the men because they are protected by the Pakistani military and/or the ISI. Their value to Pakistan as weapons against India outweighs, in Pakistani terms, the damage Pakistan may suffer from America and other nations for doing so. That judgment is right, because President Obama isn't likely to hold Pakistan accountable.
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Just as the Pakistani commitment to terrorism results from the Kashmir dispute, so does the long-term solution to it. And here's what some Republican presidential aspirant should say about it.
We have sacrificed too many American lives at the altar of nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has failed in Iraq, and is failing in Afghanistan. We need to withdraw from both nations as quickly as we can and focus on forcing the nations that sponsor terrorism -- Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia -- to cease doing so.
Pakistan is a natural enemy of the U.S., not a friend. Their cooperation in Afghanistan -- which has been vital to the war in Afghanistan -- comes at too high a price. Pakistan depends on our aid -- now over $3 billion a year -- to keep up the pretense that their government is stable and that they cooperate with us in the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. That
aid should be stopped forthwith.
India, Pakistan's blood enemy, is a natural American ally. To deal with Pakistan's terror-sponsorship, we should -- quietly and slowly -- re-engage with India.
They need to know that America understands Pakistan's terror war against them and doesn't object to Indian rule in Kashmir so long as Pakistan's aggression continues. We should ask for permission to covertly base our forces in India to operate against Pakistani terrorism, and for them to join our covert actions against that threat.
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http://spectator.org/archives/2011/05/1 ... s-pakistan