Bharat Rakshak

ramana wrote: First it supports the motto; "Satyame jayate!"
Second it helps to unDIE the elite. Makes them more circumspect.
Third its indirect action will be reduce the fake shine of American do goodness.

shyamd wrote:Whatever it is, even nationalists (the ones in the know) have kept quiet and calmed down.

shyamd wrote:Remember the nuke deal. Yes, A few spoke up. But what about people like KS guru and why did BJP allow it to be passed after being briefed by US ambassador?The world knows about 98 failure.

ramana wrote:

shyamd wrote:What is India going to do once it finds out the truth? Lets say it is the US, it won't change whats going on in the background and the bigger picture.

Second it helps to unDIE the elite. Makes them more circumspect.

shyamd wrote:Remember the nuke deal. Yes, A few spoke up. But what about people like KS guru and why did BJP allow it to be passed after being briefed by US ambassador?

The world knows about 98 failure.

ramana wrote:KS garu thinks that getting India out of the NSG regime and be recognised as a de-facto if not de-jure nuke state is worth the effort.

ramana wrote:KS garu thinks that getting India out of the NSG regime and be recognised as a de-facto if not de-jure nuke state is worth the effort.

If Mumbai Police is to be believed, American-born terrorist David Headley, who has confessed to conducting a recce of all 26/11 targets in the city, may have played no role in the carnage. The assessment by the Mumbai Police is reflected in its appeal before the Bombay High Court in which its elite Crime Branch is silent on the role of the Pakistan-origin LeT terrorist while contesting the acquittal of Fahim Ansari and Sabahuddin in the November 26, 2008 attack that left 166 people dead.

While the Ministry of Home Affairs burnt midnight oil over getting access to Headley after his role in the brazen attack emerged, the focus of Mumbai Police through its Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal D Nikam was that the terrorists intruded into the country's financial capital with the help of hand-written maps drawn by Ansari.

A response was also sought from Joint Commissioner of Mumbai's Crime Branch Himanshu Roy to comment on role played by Headley in 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. However, there was no immediate response from him.

OPED | Wednesday, February 2, 2011 |

26/11 story takes a curious turn

February 02, 2011 12:26:55 AM

Shashi Shekhar

A lawsuit has been filed in the US against the perpetrators of the Mumbai carnage by Pakistani jihadis in which American citizens also died. It remains to be seen what happens next in the case. Meanwhile, Hafiz Saeed, the chief of Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, has demanded that the Government of Pakistan should represent him in the US courts. Which way will Islamabad decide?

While the death sentence awarded to Amir Ajmal Kasab in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks case does the rounds in the Bombay High Court, the wheels of justice on 26/11 seem to have pretty much stalled in Pakistan. Interestingly, a curious controversy has arisen in Pakistan in relation to a lawsuit filed in the US on behalf of the victims of 26/11 who were American citizens. In the dock over that lawsuit in the US are Shuja Pasha who is the head of the ISI and also Hafiz Saeed who is the head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa’h, the front organisation for the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba. In what must be seen as a mockery of the international ban on JuD and the global designation of Lashkar-e-Tayyeba as a terrorist outfit, you had Hafiz Saeed petitioning the Lahore High Court for the Pakistani state to defend him in the lawsuit that has been filed in the US.

It is anybody’s guess at this time if the lawsuit in the US would actually see either Shuja Pasha or Hafiz Saeed standing in the dock. However, the judicial activity in the US has had a side effect in the US media. ProPublica, a US based new age media outlet, has over the last few months published some of the most extensive accounts on the background events leading up to the November 26, 2008, Mumbai attacks. The details published by ProPublica are noteworthy for two reasons. They highlight the role played by ISI officers at various stages during the planning and execution of the Mumbai 26/11 attacks. Second, they also describe for the first time the key personality in Pakistan — Sajid Mir, who was handling David Headley, the American Pakistani quadruple agent who has been charged by a Federal Court in the US with coordinating the logistics for the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.

ProPublica’s profile of Sajid Mir is significant for a variety of reasons. Before the Headley arrests in 2009, little was known of Sajid Mir beyond the scanty revelations by a French court in a case involving a Lashkar-e-Tayyeba recruit, Willie Brigette. Before the Headley arrests much of the Indian narrative on key Lashkar-e-Tayyeba personnel was limited to two kinds of profiles. The first was of individuals who were above the ground and identified publicly like Hafiz Saeed and Abdul Rehman Lakhvi. The second kind was of individuals who were known mostly by what appear to be aliases with no details of their real identity. These aliases included amongst others most notably Azam Cheema, Abu Al Qama and Yusuf Muzammil. The name Sajid Mir was mostly absent in the Indian narrative on key Lashkar-e-Tayyeba personnel.

ProPublica describes Sajid Mir to have born sometime in the mid to late-1970s. He is also described as having been born of an Indian Muslim who migrated to Pakistan. Sajid Mir is believed to have spent his formative years in West Asia and to have taken to militancy during his late teens. The profile in ProPublica is quite indepth on Sajid Mir’s role in the planning of 26/11 and on the events after 26/11 leading up to David Headley’s arrest. It describes his various aliases as Abu Bara (Father of Bara), Uncle Bill, Sajid Bill, Wassi and Ibrahim. A recurring question through ProPublica’s account on Sajid Mir is the ambiguity on whether he was an ISI officer and consequently a Major in the Pakistan Army.

There is, however, an intriguing gap in ProPublica’s narrative on Sajid Mir from the time of his initiation in to the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba at the age of 16 to the events after 9/11 when he began recruiting foreigners for the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba. The ProPublica report talks of an undated arrest of Sajid Mir by the Dubai police and a subsequent thanks to an intervention by the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba. ProPublica also quotes a report compiled by India’s National Investigation Agency of the Headley interrogation that Sajid Mir was born in Lahore and had two brothers and two sisters.

The reference by ProPublica to the arrest in Dubai is intriguing for the parallels with another narrative of a similar arrest in Dubai and a subsequent release after Lashkar-e-Tayyeba intervention.

On May 20, 2003, the Indian Express in New Delhi carried a story by Tushar Srivastava titled ‘Ansari wanted to eliminate Delhi ACPs’. The story was about Aftab Ansari who is currently on death row in India for the 2002 terrorist attack on the American Center in Kolkota. In that story Aftab Ansari who was then in prison in Kolkota was accused of having sent SMSs to his associates in Dubai directing them to carry out targeted assassinations of specific Delhi Police officers. In the same story is an account of an arrest in Dubai of Aftab Ansari’s brother-in-law Tahir by the Dubai Police. Aftab Ansari is quoted in that story as having told interrogators that his brother-in-law Tahir was subsequently released by Dubai Police after an intervention by Lashkar-e-Tayyeba’s Azam Cheema upon the payment of a certain sum of money.

Little is known of Aftab Ansari’s brother-in-law Tahir beyond two scanty reports and several stray references to him. The most definitive account of Tahir comes from a story in The Hindu dated September 21, 2008 by Praveen Swami titled ‘Indian Mujahideen linked to organised crime’. In this story are details of how Aftab Ansari travelled to Pakistan on a fake passport after his release bail from Tihar Jail in the late 1990s. Aftab Ansari is described as having married a Pakistani Citizen whose brother Tahir it is said was with Ansari in Tihar Jail on terrorism related charges in Jammu & Kashmir. Other stray media references to Ansari’s matrimony and Tahir refer to Ansari’s wife being based in Karachi, her family’s base in Rawalpindi, her brother Tahir as Aftab Ansari’s cell mate during the 1990s. Praveen Swami also writing in The Hindu on Aftab Ansari’s arrest in 2002 had referred to his brother-in-law Tahir as serving time in Tihar, in the present tense.

It cannot be definitively said if Sajid Mir of 26/11 was Aftab Ansari’s brother-in-law Tahir who participated in jihad in Jammu & Kashmir during the 1990s. However the Karachi Project has always been described as the ISI’s project to leverage underworld elements of Indian origin based in Karachi. No individual signifies the nexus between the underworld, ISI sponsored Islamist terror and Indian origin terrorist outfits better than Aftab Ansari. Amir Raza Khan, who has been described as Indian Mujahideen’s point man in Pakistan, was closely associated with Aftab Ansari. If indeed the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba’s Sajid Mir is Ansari’s brother-in-law, it could complete the picture on the Karachi Project.

As ProPublica concludes, it is likely none of those who really sponsored 26/11 will ever be brought to justice. But it is important to know the whole truth. It is unfortunate that to date the most extensive accounts of the background events to 26/11 come from the American media. A full accounting of all the facts related to Pakistan sponsored Islamist terror events in India must come from the Indian state. It is never too late for a commission along the lines of the 9/11 Commission to go into 26/11 and all the events leading up to it. The partisan political atmosphere in New Delhi, however, does not offer much hope of that happening anytime soon.

David Headley videotaped the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and its large residential colony in Mumbai for the ISI. This video, Headley revealed, was not given to the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

During his interrogation by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in Chicago, Headley said, "(in March 2008) Major Iqbal (who he described as his "handler" in the ISI) asked me to explore BARC in Mumbai and specially its staff colony as a target. He gave me the mobile phone camera (and) some counterfeit money." After he returned, Headley gave the video to Iqbal but did not give it to his LeT colleague, Sajid Majid.

CIA's Rambo runs amok
March 03, 2011 4:33:33 AM

G Parthasarathy

With tensions mounting between Pakistan and the US over the Raymond Davis affair, the flaws in America's AfPak policy have become more glaring than before.

It could well have been a scene from a Sylvester Stallone ‘Rambo’ thriller. The ‘good guy’ is ‘Rambo’ Raymond Davis, a Special Forces sharpshooter-turned-CIA agent, sent to eliminate ‘bad guy’ terrorists in ‘major non-NATO ally’ Pakistan. ‘Rambo’ Raymond Davis is followed by two ‘bad guys’ through the shady areas of Lahore on January 27. The ‘bad guys’ are actually ISI agents assigned to trail ‘Rambo’ Raymond Davis, who has been eliminating the agency’s jihadi and Taliban assets in Pakistani terrorist badlands, including in the tribal areas straddling the AfPak border. The ISI stalkers draw their pistols and move towards ‘Rambo’ Raymond Davis’s car. He draws his trusty six-shooter and brings down the two ‘bad guys’. He then radios for help and an American Consulate car rushes to the scene, with the rescuers running over a pedestrian while driving the wrong way on a one-way street. ‘Rambo’ Raymond Davis is overpowered and jailed. All hell breaks loose between the two ‘major non-NATO allies’.

The American version of the status of Mr Davis is that he holds a diplomatic passport and was issued a visa after being designated a ‘regional affairs officer’ — an euphemism for his being a CIA operative — with his background known to the hosts. He was also listed as ‘administrative and technical staff’ which entitles him to diplomatic immunity. According to the Pakistanis, Mr Davis is actually an employee of the private security agency, Hyperion Protective Consultants. Oddly, while the Americans insist Mr Davis is an embassy employee, the US State Department spokesman has described him as a “(Lahore) Consulate employee”. Amid these flip-flops by the Obama Administration, former Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureishi, who had avoided a scheduled visit to Munich, evidently fearing that he was on the verge of being fired, joined issue immediately after he lost his job. Mr Qureishi claimed his Ministry had carried out a detailed study and concluded that Mr Davis was not entitled to diplomatic immunity.

These developments have come just when Pakistan’s politics is becoming increasingly volatile. The Zardari Government in Islamabad does not want hassles in Pakistan’s relations with the US. The issue would have been settled and Mr Davis quietly repatriated to the US if the incident had taken place in the Federal Capital Area, where President Asif Ali Zardari controls the police. But, Lahore is not the federal capital. Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has shown no inclination of making life easy for Mr Zardari. After easing Mr Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party out of the ruling coalition in Punjab, moves will be initiated to get his brother, Mr Nawaz Sharif, back as Pakistan’s Prime Minister. Mr Nawaz Sharif knows that his PML(N) will sweep the polls in any national election. The Sharif brothers also have no inhibitions in being seen to be supportive of the growing anti-Americanism in Pakistan. Mr Shahbaz Sharif has funded Hafiz Saeed’s Jamaat-ud-Dawa’h after it was declared an international terrorist organisation. The Punjab Police has swiftly arrested and charged Mr Davis with murder, knowing that the judiciary headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry is virulently anti-Zardari. The Lahore High Court has deferred the case till March 14. In the meantime, Mr Davis sleeps in a Lahore jail despite assertions by US President Barack Obama that he enjoys diplomatic immunity and should be released.

Stirring this boiling cauldron is the all-powerful Pakistani Army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and his ever-loyal ISI chief, now under extension, Lt General Ahmed Shuja Pasha. There has been no love lost between the CIA and the ISI in recent days. The CIA is furious that its base in the Khost Province of Afghanistan, near the AfPak border, was attacked and destroyed by jihadis from across the Durand Line. Tensions between the two intelligence agencies escalated when the ISI leaked the identity of the CIA Station Chief then working undercover in Pakistan. Moreover, Mr Davis was undermining the ISI by establishing his own links to eliminate the jihadis in the Pashtun tribal areas along the AfPak border. Worse still, he was evidently attempting to undermine and infiltrate the citadel of the ‘holiest of the holies’ the Lashkar-e Tayyeba and the Patron Saint of the ISI, the redoubtable Hafiz Mohammed Saeed. The Pakistani Army quietly joined the chorus seeking to push the Americans into a corner and force them to offer concessions, even though Gen Kayani does not exactly love fellow Punjabi Nawaz Sharif. What the Americans, like some in South Block, have failed to acknowledge is that Gen Kayani believes that the US needs Pakistan just now more than Islamabad needs Washington, DC. He evidently feels that the Americans will blink first, which they show every inclination of doing, in this standoff.

The Davis affair is a manifestation of the larger malaise affecting the transactional US-Pakistan relationship. Thanks to some adept diplomacy by India, the Obama Administration soon gave up the thoughtless proposal mooted by Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid that the US should actively involve itself in meddling in the issue of Jammu & Kashmir by appointing Mr Bill Clinton as a Special Envoy. Moreover, its initial honeymoon with China soon led to estrangement, accentuated by the global economic downturn. The realisation dawned in Washington that New Delhi would be a useful partner in fashioning an inclusive Asian architecture for security and cooperation. While Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and his bureaucrats have been constantly moaning that the Americans are not treating them ‘equally’ with India and denying them a nuclear deal, Gen Kayani appears hell bent on giving the US a difficult time by providing support and haven to the ‘Quetta Shura’ headed by Mullah Omar and to the Taliban’s Haqqani network.

American diplomacy in Afghanistan also needs review. Afghan President Hamid Karzai disagrees with American policies and is meeting Lt Gen Shuja Pasha regularly, seeking Pakistani cooperation for ‘reconciliation’ with the Taliban. The Americans have not evolved a coherent strategy of how to get the Taliban to renounce violence and abide the Afghan Constitution. Nor is there confidence that the Afghan National Army will develop the capabilities to overcome Taliban depredations by 2014. The realisation has to dawn that terrorist safe havens in Pakistan cannot be eliminated unless the US reduces its dependence on Pakistani logistical support and fashions alternative logistical arrangements with Russia and Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbours. Only then can the international community evolve viable policies for governance within Afghanistan and ensure that the AfPak border is no longer what Admiral Mike Mullen has called “the epicentre of global terrorism”.

abhishek_sharma wrote:Arrested ISI spy reveals Headley-handler link

ramana wrote:One way to look at DCH-RD case is the US gave DCH to TSP for use against India, while running R-D inside TSP.

JE Menon wrote:Blood money paid, RD released...

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.

ramana wrote:Patni,
We have a Rana trial thread.

Star Witness in Terror Trial Could Heighten U.S.-Pakistan Tension
by Sebastian Rotella
ProPublica,

May 22, 2011, 6 p.m

Versions of this article appeared in the Washington Post and the Guardian.

CHICAGO -- The life of David Coleman Headley, a confessed American terrorist and Pakistani spy, has moved from a soap opera to a crime story to an espionage thriller embroiling the elites of India, Pakistan and the United States.

Monday begins the most revealing chapter yet: The courtroom drama.

Headley, a Pakistani-American businessman and former DEA informant, will be the star witness against Tahawwur Rana of Chicago, his boyhood friend and alleged accomplice in the 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai. Opening arguments are set for Monday in a trial that has drawn international attention because Headley's testimony could reinforce allegations that Pakistan plays a double game in the fight against terrorism.

The prosecution will depend largely on how the jury views Headley, one of the most intriguing figures to surface in a U.S. terror case. The burly, smooth-talking 50-year-old has a swashbuckling personality and a knack for juggling relationships with multiple wives, terrorist groups and law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

"Sometimes he'd tell my husband, 'Oh, I want to be in movies,' a movie star or something like that," Rana's wife, Samraz, told ProPublica and PBS FRONTLINE in her first-ever interview. "So it looks like he wants to be famous."

Headley has gotten his wish. He pleaded guilty last year to conducting reconnaissance for the Mumbai attacks, which killed 166 people, and for a plot against Denmark. His confessions painted a devastating portrait of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), because he says ISI officers helped the Lashkar-i-Taiba terrorist group plot the commando-style attacks on Mumbai.

Rana's defense will center 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. Rana, the defense will argue, had no idea Headley was plotting mass murder.

"They are using a whale to catch a minnow," said defense attorney Charles Swift. He called Headley "a master manipulator."

Federal prosecutors recently raised the political stakes by indicting a suspected ISI officer for the murders in Mumbai of six Americans, whose deaths are the basis for the U.S. trial. The officer, identified only as Major Iqbal, allegedly oversaw Headley's scouting in India and then helped launch him on the Lashkar plot against Denmark, although Iqbal is not charged in the Denmark case.

The decision to indict Iqbal was made at high levels in Washington. It sent a tough signal from the Obama administration, which had expressed frustration about Pakistan's reliability even before Osama bin Laden was found in a military town near Islamabad.

"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. "At some point in time there is not going to be any doubt whatsoever that the ISI coordinated the attack with Lashkar."

The indictment refrains from mentioning 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 will likely address the allegations about the ISI, especially because the defense has emphasized 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."

Pakistan Questions Headley's Credibility

The prosecution's case is based on a secretive international investigation by the FBI and some 30,000 pages of court documents, most of them sealed. Headley's testimony is backed by corroborating evidence from other witnesses, communications intercepts, travel records, reconnaissance videos and the contents of his computer. If there is strong evidence that ISI personnel helped kill Americans, it would inflict further damage on an endangered alliance with Pakistan into which Washington has poured billions.

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 masterminds 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, U.S. officials say. Pakistan's prosecution of several Lashkar chiefs arrested in 2009, including one now under U.S. indictment, has stalled.

Rana, a doctor by training, is the lowest-ranking suspect and the only defendant in Chicago. He is charged with material support of terrorism for letting Headley use his immigration consulting firm as a cover overseas.

Rana has known Headley since they attended an elite military school in Pakistan. Rana's wife, who also has a medical degree, met Headley in the 1990s after she emigrated to the United States. Although he was a convicted heroin dealer and recovering addict, he charmed her conservative family, she said during the interview in 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's mother came from a rich Philadelphia family and his father was a renowned, politically influential Pakistani broadcaster. Headley told investigators that he has a distant Pakistani relative who was a former deputy director of the ISI and Army general, according to Indian and U.S. 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, Headley returned to the United States, where he managed bars and owned a video rental store. Multi-lingual 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 Sept. 11 attacks, the DEA directed him to collect intelligence on terrorists as well as drugs. In December 2001, the U.S. government ended his probation three years early and rushed him to Pakistan, where he began training in Lashkar terror camps weeks later, according to court documents, officials and his associates.

Some federal officials say he remained an informant at least three more years, but the DEA disagrees.

"David Headley was sent to Pakistan for approximately three weeks to further a drug investigation in 1998," said a DEA official familiar with his work as an informant. The DEA official declined to comment on Headley's mission in late 2001, but said: "He was deactivated in early 2002."

That assertion only deepens the contradictions and mysteries about Headley's missions overseas. 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 Personality: Charming and Chaotic

Headley's personal life has been melodramatic. 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 Koran, praising al Qaeda 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. Hard-core extremists shun dogs because they see them as un-Islamic and unclean.

Despite Headley's guilty plea, Rana's wife finds it difficult to believe that her jovial, playful 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."

When the DEA busted Headley in 1988 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, 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'."

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

In 2006, the ISI recruited Headley in Pakistan, according to his confession to Indian investigators. In addition to Major Iqbal, his trainer and hander, he said he met ISI officers named Major Samir Ali, Lt. Colonel Hamza and Colonel Shah. After specialized ISI training, he did 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 U.S. 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.

Both Mir and Major Iqbal concentrated on terror targets, but Iqbal assigned Headley to gather military intelligence as well. He gave Headley about $28,000 to establish an office of Rana's firm in Mumbai as a cover and for other expenses, the indictment says.

The Ranas Took Care of Headley’s Wife and Children

Rana's wife insists that her husband had no idea about the plot. The Ranas traveled to Mumbai, where she has family, days before the attack in November 2008.

"It's a zero percent 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 defense, however, will have to explain wiretaps in which Rana appears to praise the Mumbai masterminds. Evidence indicates he communicated with Major Iqbal. And he 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 Mohamed, according to the indictment.

Major Iqbal met at least twice with Headley 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 Col. Shah and Major Samir Ali as the Denmark plot was taken over by al Qaeda, 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 cooperation. Headley quickly did what he had done in the past: he changed sides. He spent weeks detailing his role in the Mumbai massacre.

"If you see him, you cannot even imagine that he can do things like that," Samraz Rana said. "I mean he talks so good. He's so polite."

Now, though, Rana's wife 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 realize what intention he had."

Colin Freeze
It was also expressed that an attack on National Defence College in India would "kill more brigadiers" than in 4 Indo-Pak wars. #Ranatrial
4 minutes ago
Colin Freeze
Headley was overheard mulling list of targets. Temple in Gujarat. Shiv Sena. Bollywood. Copenhagen. #Ranatrial
4 minutes ago
Colin Freeze
Sept09 No one seems to be able to get in touch with Illyas Kashmiri in Waziristan Headley tells Rana in car. #Ranatrial
10 minutes ago
Colin Freeze
By Sept 09 police have bugged Rana's car in Chicago. Headley caught saying 2 men he met in England are missing amid drone strikes in Pak.
11 minutes ago
Colin Freeze
Headley's ISI handler, Major Iqbal,broke contact in March."I have yet to come across a coward like him,"Headley gripes in email.#Ranatrial
13 minutes ago
Colin Freeze
When prosecutor asked Headley why he wanted to do this, Headley said "I wanted a lot of reward from God." #Ranatrial
15 minutes ago
Colin Freeze
"I like option B. I can do it on my own. I can do it easily," Headley emails his Pakistani initimates. #Ranatrial
16 minutes ago
Colin Freeze
Plan B Headley wrote was "more economical, more effective since we were having trouble w/ manpower and weaponry." #Ranatrial
17 minutes ago
Colin Freeze
Instead of terrorists storming newspaper, Headley considers "Plan B" -- asassinating cartoonist/cultural editor. #Ranatrial
17 minutes ago
Colin Freeze
Headley mulled scalin down Denmark ambitions. #Ranatrial
18 minutes ago
Colin Freeze
Headley can't get promised help from jihadis in Denmark/UK. Low funds. Doing recce on bicycle. #Ranatrial
19 minutes ago
Colin Freeze
In Summer 09 Headley frustrated with Lashkar for not approving plot to attack Denmark."Esprit de corps is screwed up" he writes. #Ranatrial
19 minutes ago
Colin Freeze
Bala = Maj. Iqbal Bala's Co. = ISI "They" = Lashkar e Taiba. #Ranatrial
48 minutes ago
Colin Freeze
Gem of a coded msg from Headley. "They will never do business without Mr. Bala's company ... Mr. Bala's co. will beat them up." #Ranatrial
49 minutes ago
Colin Freeze
Guess this means that FBI/NSA was up on Headley's phones in Aug 09. H being made to read tscripts of his own (eliptical) convos. #Ranatrial
1 hour ago
Colin Freeze
Jury has been handed book of 26/11 trancripted conversations to follow along. Headley being made to read from some of them. #Ranatrial
1 hour ago
Colin Freeze
Sajid Mir was in Karachi with LET's Abu Qadafa on 26/11 coaching attackers by phone."He was watching what was going on in India."#Ranatrial
1 hour ago
Colin Freeze
Rana alleged to reply Sajid Mir was tactically a "KhalidbinWhalid" -- reference to prophet's general. #Ranatrial
1 hour ago
Colin Freeze
Headley says Sajid told him this personally and he relayed it to Rana. #Ranatrial
1 hour ago
Colin Freeze
Sajid, watching on TV,advised gunmen to use matress as cover and meet Indian forces in stairwell.The Indians "Scampered" H says. #Ranatrial
1 hour ago
Colin Freeze
Headley testifying how LET's Sajid Mir coached Chabad House gunmen to resist Indian commandos trying to rescue hostages. #Ranatrial
1 hour ago
Colin Freeze
"Pasha's" full name is Abdurahman Hashim Syed -- Pak Army-turned-LET operative arrested briefly by ISI in 09. #Ranatrial
1 hour ago
Colin Freeze
Headley duped LET handler Sajid Mir who told him "that (MMP)project was on hold he didn't want me to do it any longer." #Ranatrial
2 hours ago
Colin Freeze
Oct. 20-29 Headley in Copenhagen. Returns to Atlanta.Customs asks him purpose of visit."I said I was an immigration consultant." #Ranatrial
2 hours ago
Colin Freeze
Headley testimony begins with blow by blow of MMP, plot assassinate those "I felt to be directly responsible for the cartooons" #Ranatrial
2 hours ago
Colin Freeze
WikiLeaks: Intense US monitoring of Pak nuke program http://is.gd/icdxUX
13 hours ago
Colin Freeze
The #Ranatrial has me thinking about a talk I had two years ago with a rather candid ex-ISI officer Khalid Khawaja. http://bit.ly/melnNV
13 hours ago
Colin Freeze
"We used to call him "Agent Headley" because we suspected him to be CIA"-- Rahul Bhatt (LET/ISI told H to cozy up to a 'Rahul') #Ranatrial

arun wrote:The UK‘s Daily Mail drawing on testimony provided in the ongoing trial of alleged Islamic Terrorist Tahawwur Hussain Rana reports the involvement of the ISI / ISID, the Intelligence Agency of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, in the Islamic Terrorist attack on Mumbai:

Pakistan’s intelligence agency was involved in planning of the Mumbai terror plot, conspirator claims

Janet Napolitano, speaking on a trip to New Delhi where she met top Indian security officials, was asked about the threat posed by the group blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people were killed.

“It is is one that seeks to harm people and the US perspective is that the LeT is an organisation which is in the same ranks of al Qaeda-related groups,” Napolitano told reporters after day-long talks in New Delhi.

“The United States has given India full access to the witness and once the case (trial) is over more access will be given. It is an example of how our two countries operate,” she said.

Tahawwur Hussain Rana, Mumbai attacks co-accused, had an ambitious plan to enter Bollywood by launching Rahul Bhatt, son of film director Mahesh Bhatt, in a movie that he wanted to make.

This was said by David Coleman Headley, prime accused in the Mumbai case, before a Chicago court during questioning by Rana's attorney Patrick W Blegan.

Rana, a Pakistani Canadian, was not able to go ahead with his plans as it was against the ideals of Lashkar-e-Taiba, who opposed such a move.