Bharat Rakshak

As Mumbai carnage unfolded, Headley planned next strike

Praveen Swami

Temperamental Lashkar operative broke ranks with commanders to focus on attack in Europe
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He wanted to bomb offices of Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet


Headley’s arrest compelled Lashkar to drop its plan to attack National Defence College in Delhi


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NEW DELHI: Even as millions of people across the world watched the 2008 November carnage unfold in Mumbai, the Lashkar-e-Taiba secret agent who helped plan the massacre was preparing for another murderous attack.

Pakistani-American jihadist David Headley hoped to bomb the offices of Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, whose publications of cartoons of Prophet Mohammad in 2005 offended many Muslims across the world.

Headley’s temperamental pursuit of what he called the “Mickey Mouse Project” led him to defy his Lashkar commanders, and undermined the jihadist group’s hopes of attacking the National Defence College here — forcing it to launch an alternative operation targeting the Indian High Commission in Dhaka that police in Bangladesh broke up last month.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s documents show Headley began planning the “Mickey Mouse Project” in October 2008 — just days before the 10-man Lashkar assault team used video footage he had gathered in five visits to Mumbai to stage an attack that claimed 163 lives.

That month, Headley initiated an e-mail correspondence on the “Mickey Mouse Project” with Abdul Rehman Hashim Syed, a former Pakistan Army officer, who had become a ranking Lashkar commander in charge of the terror group’s networks in Bangladesh.

During his first visit to Copenhagen in January 2009, Headley visited the offices of Jyllands Posten. He expressed an interest in purchasing advertising space, claiming to be a representative of the Chicago-based First World Immigration. First World’s owner, Tahawwur Rana, was an old school friend of Headley’s, and the firm provided him cover for his operations in Mumbai.

Later that year, Headley travelled to Pakistan at Syed’s invitation. Both are believed to have met with top Harkat ul-Jihad-e-Islami commander Illyas Kashmiri — an al-Qaeda linked jihadist, who is among Pakistan’s most-wanted men — at a training camp near Razmak, in Waziristan.

Headley reacted with ire to a May 4, 2009 post on a web group run by former students of his school in Pakistan, claiming that there was little support for al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the North West Frontier Province.

“The bazaar,” Headley wrote of his own visit, “is bustling with Chechens, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Russians, Bosnians, some from European Union countries and, of course, our Arab brothers. According to my [original emphasis] survey, the foreign population is a little less than a third of the total. Any Waziri or Mehsud I spoke to seemed grateful to God for the privilege of being able to host the Foreign Mujahideen.”

Early on, Headley believed the “Mickey Mouse Project” had the Lashkar’s support. Late this summer though, the Lashkar lost interest in the Danish plot. Lashkar commander Sajid Mir, who played a key role in organising the Mumbai attacks, e-mailed Headley on July 3, asking to meet with him to discuss “some new investment plans”: code, the FBI says, for an attack in India.

However, in correspondence that continued until late August, it became clear that Headley was focussed on the “Mickey Mouse Project.” Late in August, Headley promised Mir he would to travel to Pakistan to discuss the Indian operation — but pushed forward with his Danish project.

In July 2008, Headley flew to Copenhagen and carried out a second round of reconnaissance. He returned to the U.S. on August 5, and was interviewed at Atlanta airport by a customs official — a consequence, it is likely, of his past criminal record for smuggling narcotics. Headley told the authorities he was in Europe on business for Rana’s immigration firm. However, FBI documents record, a search of Headley’s luggage “revealed no papers, flyers or any documents for First World”.

Mir, worried at Headley’s silence during these weeks, sent an e-mail enquiring about his whereabouts on August 7. Syed was briefly detained by the Pakistani authorities during Headley’s European travels, and the Lashkar commander warned he might have betrayed Headley’s plans.

In an extended September 17, 2009 phone conversation with Syed, Headley railed against Lashkar leaders like Mir who, he asserted, had “rotten guts.” Instead of backing the “Mickey Mouse Project,” he complained, “their eyes are again in that direction [India]”. “I am just telling you,” he lectured Syed, “that the companies in your competition have started handling themselves in a far better way.”

FBI agents also heard a frustrated Headley tell a contact in Pakistan that “business must go on.” “I don’t care if I am working for Microsoft or for General Electric or Phillips,” Headley said, an elliptical reference to the fact that he was little concerned with allegiance to particular jihadist groups as long as they offered him a platform to carry out the attacks he wanted.

Headley’s arrest in September compelled the Lashkar to drop its plans to attack the National Defence College. Bangladesh-based Afghan jihad veteran Abdul Mutaliq was charged with organising an attack on the Indian High Commission in Dhaka, timed to coincide with the anniversary of the November 26 attacks. Police in Bangladesh held Mutaliq along with three Pakistani Lashkar operatives despatched by Syed last month, pre-empting the attacks.

ramana wrote:Is he the liason to the TSPA?

ramana wrote:So Kiya Nahi was doing something?

Amber G. wrote:I have no Let IQ - but google gives some raw data ...
Pak refuse to give photo of this guy to India (to see if it is indeed zarar shah)

ramana wrote:How did Headley know he has to go to this "Pasha"? And who tasked him to change his name from Daoud Gilani to David Headley in 2005?

Rajeev Deshpande, TNN 9 December 2009, 12:34am IST
ON BOARD AIR INDIA ONE: The FBI team that visited India in the wake of the arrest of Lashkar-e-Taiba terror duo David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana has not only provided their links to the 26/11 attacks but also contacts with figures in Pakistan, including, possibly, serving officers of Pakistani army.

Speaking to journalists on the way back from Moscow, foreign secretary Nirupama Rao said India would be "naturally" keen to interrogate Rana and Headley. "I believe the FBI has given incriminating evidence and there are links to conspirators in Pakistan," said Rao.

Meanwhile in Delhi, sources in the government indicated that FBI has provided details of the involvement of serving officers of Pakistan army in the 26/11 plot. They also said that Mumbai police would file a supplementary chargesheet in the 26/11 case naming Headley. If the US indicts Rana in the 26/11 case, India will include his name as well in the chargesheet.

India's complaint that Pakistan is not doing enough to bring the perpetrators of 26/11 to book is shared by the Russians. This is reflected in the India-Russia joint statement as well with the two sides noting that nations must act on the "prosecute or extradite" principle in dealing with terrorists. There is also mention of respecting UN resolutions on specific outfits -- read LeT -- that have been declared as terrorist organizations.

Apart from Ajmal Kasab, Headley is another 26/11 accused in police custody in a country other than Pakistan. His role has emerged as more central to the attack on Mumbai than that of Fahim Ansari and Sabauddin, two other accused in Indian custody.

The US will certainly ask for the extradition of retired Pakistan army major Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, who, according to the FBI chargesheet, was arrested in Pakistan earlier this year, but subsequently released.

The FBI team that was in New Delhi left for Pakistan on Monday.

Until now, the FBI had not been permitted access to the 7 Pakistanis charged for the 26/11 attack in Pakistan. So its difficult to guess whether Pakistan will give any access to Rehman. According to sources, Pakistan's stock response has been that since he's retired, they had no control over Rehman's movements.

It has to be remembered that Ilyas Kashmiri of HuJI, who allegedly worked closely with the LeT and Headley on the Mumbai attacks, was once a commander in Pakistan's elite Special Services Group.

According to sources familiar with the workings of the ISI, mid-level army officers are regularly "retired" and seconded off to the ISI, so the army can maintain plausible deniability if things go wrong.

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

By Amir Mir

LAHORE: The American intelligence sleuths stationed in Pakistan are trying to ascertain whether Abdur Rehman, alias Pasha, a retired major of the Pakistan Army, who has recently been named by the FBI as a key link between the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack suspect David Headley and his Lashkar-e-Taiba handlers, is the brother-in-law of Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the absconding Ameer of the pro-Taliban Pakistani Jehadi group Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HUJI).

Rehman has been charged in a Chicago court by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) on allegations of conspiring terrorist attacks in association with Headley, a US national of Pakistani-origin, who is already in the FBI’s custody.

According to diplomatic circles in Islamabad, the American intelligence sleuths are trying to determine if Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed is the same person who had filed a petition in the Supreme Court on October 12, 2004, challenging the arrest of Qari Saifullah Akhtar and seeking his production in the apex court.

The petitioner had also sought a court order to prevent possible deportation of Qari Saifullah, his brother-in-law, to another country. The petition was thrown out on January 18, 2005. Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the Ameer of the Pakistan chapter of the HUJI, who had been arrested in 1995 for conspiring to topple the second government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, had been named by the slain PPP leader in her posthumous book -- Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West - as a principal suspect in the October 18, 2007 attempt on her life in Karachi.

Considered close to Afghan Taliban chief Mulla Omar, Qari Saifullah was arrested after his failed coup attempt in 1995, before being freed under mysterious circumstances in 1996 soon after the premature dismissal of the Bhutto government. He had subsequently traveled to Afghanistan, only to become an adviser to Mulla Omar on political affairs.

Before the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the HUJI had got membership among the Taliban cabinet as three Taliban ministers and 22 judges belonged to it. Qari was one of the few Jehadi leaders who had escaped with Mulla Omar after the Allied Forces invaded Afghanistan in October 2001.

He first took shelter in the South Waziristan Agency, then moved to Peshawar and eventually fled to Saudi Arabia, from where he decided to move to the UAE. Three years later, on August 6, 2004, Qari Saifullah was arrested by the UAE authorities and handed over to the Pakistani agencies. The arrest came after revelations during investigations of the December 2003 twin suicide attacks on Musharraf that he had been executing terrorist operations in Pakistan with the help of his men there.

Instead of trying to prosecute and convict him after his arrest, the authorities chose to keep him under detention for the next two years and nine months, without filing any criminal charges against him. However, a few months before Benazir’s return home, he was released, before being arrested again in February 2008 following Benazir’s claim of his involvement in the Karachi bombing and the subsequent pressure created by the world community. But he was released on May 21, 2007 for lack of evidence.

Pakistan Army Spokesman Major General Athar Abbas refused to either confirm or deny that Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed was actually a former major of the Pakistan Army. Same was the case with the interior ministry spokesman who was of the view that the Pakistani authorities would investigate the matter and ascertain the identity of Abdur Rehman if and when officially asked by the American FBI.

According to the 42-page FBI charge sheet, Abdur Rehman coordinated with Ilyas Kashmiri, the chief of the Azad Kashmir chapter of the Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HUJI) and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, an operative of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) to commit terrorist acts involving murder and maiming outside the US, and conspired within and outside the US to provide material support to that conspiracy.

David Headley, already arrested on October 3, 2009, has been charged with criminal conspiracy in the Mumbai terror attacks and having links with Abdur Rehman who liaised between him and terror groups including LeT and HUJI.

The charges filed in the federal court in Chicago said Headley, 49, conducted extensive surveillance of targets in Mumbai for more than two years preceding 26/11, and supplied pictures and videotapes of targets to the attackers.

By: MIKE ROBINSON
Associated Press
12/08/09 11:49 AM PST
CHICAGO — A Chicago man charged with helping to plan the terrorist attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai that left 166 dead will appear in court on Wednesday to respond to the charges, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
David Coleman Headley, 49, is due to appear before U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber for arraignment at 10:45 a.m.
Headley was charged Monday with conducting surveillance on locations around Mumbai that later became the targets of bloody attacks blamed on members of the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
The group, whose name means Army of the Pure, is an outgrowth of decades of friction between Pakistan and India over the disputed territory of Kashmir. Lashkar-e-Taiba has been outlawed in Pakistan and designated by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization.
Headley, an American of Pakistani descent, was arrested in Chicago in October and was charged with plotting to attack the Jyllands Posten newspaper in Denmark. The newspaper had published 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in 2005 that set off protests in much of the Muslim world.
Unlike his co-defendant in that case, Chicago businessman Tahawwur Rana, Headley has not yet appeared in court.
Rana's attorney, Patrick Blegen, has been attempting to get his client freed on bond. He says Rana appears to be an honest businessman who was duped by Headley.
Headley's attorneys, John Theis and Robert Seeder, have refused to comment on the charges.
A Virginia woman whose husband and 13-year-old daughter were killed in the Mumbai attacks said in a statement Monday that she was grateful U.S. authorities brought charges against Headley.
"My hope is that Headley cooperates fully and discloses all information to aid in the investigation," said the statement from Kia Scherr, whose husband, Alan, had gone to Mumbai to scout locations for a meditation retreat.

The officials declined to name the other former military officer in the case, who is suspected as a co-conspirator. He is said to have recently left the Pakistani Army and held the rank of colonel or brigadier general, higher ranks than Mr. Kashmiri held.
Prosecution documents in the case said that the officer was arrested earlier this past summer in Pakistan on unspecified charges and later released. However, another official said that the officer was discharged only after his associates pressured the Pakistani authorities to free him.
....
.. said that Pakistani authorities had arrested as many as five other people in connection with the plot in recent weeks, including some former or current Pakistani military officials.

He has Pakistani wife and four children. A neighbor says they moved into a three-story apartment building about a year ago...

Malayappan wrote:WSJ Piece on Headley but with many other references Terror Suspect Failed a Test , Cam Simpson and Siobhan Gorman, The Wal Street Journal, Dec 9, 2009

Excerpts -

Westerners have largely played supporting roles in terror activities, but Mr. Headley's ability to travel freely on a U.S. passport to Pakistan, India and Denmark gave him high value, a U.S. law enforcement official said.

"It's exactly the way you'd think al Qaeda would want to use operatives," said Evan Kohlmann, who has testified on Lashkar as an expert witness in U.S. and British courts.

Pakistan-based Lashkar has traditionally been focused on the Kashmir region, which Pakistan and India have fought over for decades. But U.S. counterterrorism officials now believe the group's ambitions are global.

There are pockets of Lashkar supporters in the U.S., including San Diego and Northern Virginia, as well as cities in Florida and in the Northeast, say current and former counterterrorism officials

Christopher Paul, a bomb-making expert who pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to bomb U.S. and other targets, discussed attending camps in Pakistan with a senior Lashkar recruiter, and later wrote to a fellow American about the ease of training with the group.

Meanwhile in Delhi, sources in the government indicated that FBI has provided details of the involvement of serving officers of Pakistan army in the 26/11 plot.

Rangudu wrote: 4. Here's another dhamaka - Sajid Mir is actually the real identity of "Zarar Shah", the man with the thickest Punjabi accent in the Mumbai tapes

SSridhar wrote:Rangudu, my hunch is Sajid Mir is Zaki-ur-Rehman-Lakhvi (aka Rehman 'chacha'). He has been always referred to as 'Chief of Operations (COO)' in literature.

According to sources familiar with the workings of the ISI, mid-level army officers are regularly "retired" and seconded off to the ISI, so the army can maintain plausible deniability if things go wrong.

Rangudu wrote:5. Sajid Mir is also likely the same person as Abu al Qama

Deceptive answers about his travels abroad to an airport inspector proved to be the undoing of Pakistani American terror suspect David Headley, charged with helping to plan the Mumbai terror attacks, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Federal authorities, already suspicious of Headley, used his return to the US in August as an opportunity, the US daily said citing unnamed officials.

A border inspector asked Headley about his overseas travel, according to court records and people familiar with the case, it said.

Headley said he was working for a company called First World Immigration Service. First World is a business that allegedly provided Headley with cover as he travelled to scout terrorist targets for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group responsible for the November 2008 assault in Mumbai, according to the federal charges.

Agents searched Headley's luggage and found it "contained no papers or other documents relating to such a business", the Journal said citing court documents. They also searched tax records and found no record of income paid to Headley by the company, court records show.

Press Trust Of India
Mumbai, December 09, 2009
First Published: 16:51 IST(9/12/2009)
Last Updated: 17:01 IST(9/12/2009)
The last visit of American terror suspect David Headley, before being arrested by the FBI, to India in March this year was to finalise synchronised terror strikes on Jewish houses located in five cities at the instance of terror outfit Lashker-e-Taiba.

Piecing together the travel trail of Headley during his visit to India in March this year, security agencies, who were briefed by FBI and US Department of Justice officials in New Delhi recently, are understood to have concluded that the US terror suspect was scouting only the Jewish targets including the El Al airlines office in Mumbai.

Headley, born to a Pakistani father and whose earlier name was Daood Gilani, has been charged by the FBI for conspiring in the audacious Mumbai attack of last year which left over 160 dead including six foreigners. On the Indian side, the National Investigating Agency (NIA), which was formed in the aftermath of 26/11, was probing the role of Headley and his Pakistani-Canadian accomplice Tahawwur Rana.

Sources privy to the investigations said that Headley had carried out reconnaissance of Israeli airlines -- El AI--office located at Cuffe Parade in March this year before moving to the national capital where he chose to stay in a small hotel at Pahargunj area.

Very quickly, the security agencies carried out the recce of the area and found a Chabad House, barely 300 metres from the hotel -- De Holiday Inn.

The Chabad House in Pahargunj, Delhi is located in narrow lanes and is frequented generally by backpackers from Israel while either going to Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh or to western parts of the country.

The sources said Headley also visited the house and posed as Jew while carrying out his reconnaissance mission for terror group Lashker.

Statements of a few have been recorded by the NIA, the sources said.

From Delhi, Headley travelled to Pushkar in the outskirts of Ajmer in Rajasthan where he insisted on a room opposite a Jewish prayer centre claiming he was a Jew and wanted "holy sight".

The hotel staff, in their statements to the NIA, said that 48-year-old Headley had insisted on the room view which was right opposite to the prayer hall of the Jew centre in Pushkar.

After staying there for three days, Headley moved to Goa where he stayed at a guest house located in Anjuna village along the coast of Arabian sea before proceeding towards Pune where he recced the area around Koregaon Park.

Though initially it was believed that he wanted to target the foreigners coming to the Osho Ashram, it was found later that he had scouted the area for targeting the Jewish prayer centre in the area.

Headley later left for Mumbai where he again went to the Cuffe Prade area and apparently firmed up some loose ends in targeting the Israel Airways office before flying to Pakistan from the Chatrapati Shivaji airport.