United States prosecutors on Tuesday defended a plea agreement with David Headley, co-accused in the Mumbai terror attacks, saying that this helped the Federal Bureau to extract invaluable information from him about Laskar-e-Tayiba and other terrorist outfits and their leaders in Pakistan.
Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Rana was involved in the Mumbai attacks and he and his friend David Headley were part of the same team that carried out the terror assault in 2008, a US federal attorney told a Chicago court on Tuesday.
Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Headley approached the Inter-Services Intelligence to help another co-accused in Mumbai attacks Tahawwur Rana to get back to Pakistan, according to a video recording produced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation before a court in Chicago on Monday.
Tahawwur Rana, the 26/11 co-accused, did not congratulate co-conspirator David Coleman Headley, unlike several others, on the success of the Mumbai terror attacks, attorney of the Pakistani-Canadian said during the trial.
Mumbai attack co-accused David Headley on Thursday told a US court that a Pakistani Navy man was present during discussions with his ISI handler Major Iqbal on landing sites and arrival of Lashkar-e-Tayiba terrorists by sea.
Lashkar-e-Tayiba had initially scheduled the Mumbai terror attacks on September 29, but abandoned its plan as attackers got stuck on a rock and the boat in which they were travelling was destroyed, according to unsealed court documents.
According to these documents, unsealed after Chicago Tribune petitioned before the court, Major Iqbal, said to be an ISI officer, also gave him Indian currency notes for his operation in India.
According to the unsealed documents, following completion of the camps and leadership course, Lashkar assigned a series of 'handlers' to Headley.
Headley also said that LeT boss Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind behind the November 2008 attack that killed 166 persons, motivated him for carrying out a 'jihad'. Saeed told him that the satisfaction of one second of 'jihad' is equal to "100 years of worship."
The trial of Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Hussain Rana who is accused with David Coleman Headley for the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks began in Chicago on Tuesday.
Raja Lahrasib Khan, the 56-year-old Pakistani American cab driver accused of sending some few thousand dollars to Al Qaeda leader Ilyas Kashmiri filed a motion for his release in a US court.
A 15-year-old youth armed with a handgun who burst into a classroom and held 23 students and a teacher hostage for more than five hours in a US town died on Tuesday from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
A US court has indicted three owners of a bankrupt Chicago-based real estate development firm for operating a Ponzi scheme that defrauded hundreds of investors, including Indians and Pakistanis, and three banks out of $43 million while claiming to be compliant with Sharia law.
The status hearing of Pakistani-Canadian terror suspect Tahawwur Rana, charged with conspiring in the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008, was on Wednesday adjourned for four weeks. "The hearing, originally scheduled for August 25, has now been shifted to September 20," Rana's attorney Patrick W Blegen said
Sushil Sheth, a Chicago area physician, was sentenced on Wednesday by US District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer and ordered to begin serving the 60-month prison term in two months.