Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Coleman Headley, a Pakistani-American accused of criminal conspiracy in the Mumbai terror attacks, is set to appear before a court in Chicago on Wednedsay to respond to the charges against him.
The Goa police on Tuesday said it cannot rule out the possibility of American terror suspect and Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Headley visiting the state earlier this year but has no conclusive evidence to prove it.The national media on Tuesday, quoting officials of the Union Home Ministry, said that Headley had surveyed two prime locations in Goa -- Arambl and Anjuna beaches.
As an immediate fall-out of the Federal Bureau of Investigation foiling a Lashkar-e-Tayiba plot to use United States nationals to carry out major terror attacks in India, the Indian Embassy in Washington has tightened visa approval norms for Pakistan-born American citizens, whose applications would now have to be cleared by New Delhi. An instruction in this regard has recently been issued by Union Home Secretary G K Pillai.
American investigators who questioned Ajmal Amir Iman Kasab, the lone terrorist captured during the Mumbai attack, are convinced he is a Pakistani national and that the terrorist strike was planned and executed by the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, diplomatic sources said on Tuesday.These findings fit in with comments by top American leaders like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Admiral Mike Mullen, the senior-most US military official, who have asked Pakistan to take quick action.
Dr Rajiv Shah, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development and the highest-ranking Indian American in the Barack Obama administration, has set the record straight over conflicting reports that he had visited a relief camp run by a front organisation of Jamaat-ud-Dawa in Pakistan's Sindh province and handed over US aid.The JuD is headed by Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Tayiba and alleged mastermind of the horrific 26/11 terror attacks.
Riedel, who was also the erstwhile director for South Asia in the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration and most recently an adviser on foreign policy to the Obama campaign, said it's difficult to believe the Pakistani government's assertions that its intelligence service has no links to LeT. If there's anything that is a 64 million dollar question today," it is finding out the "extent of its ties to the Pakistani intelligence service."
Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Tayiba was planning to use an American national to carry out a major terrorist attack in India, US investigating authorities said on Tuesday.
Headley visited Goa in 2008 during the last leg of the reccee that he had conducted in Mumbai. Sources in the Intelligence Bureau told rediff.com that Headley was definitely not on a holiday in Goa, but was exploring the possibility of carrying out a terror strike in the tourist destination. The NIA says it is possible that Headley was using the American couple in Goa as a cover. For the Lashkar, Goa was a backup option to the Mumbai attack.
Was American national, terror suspect and Lashkar-Tayiba operative David Coleman Headley a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent? This is something that both Indian investigators and also the Intelligence Bureau are trying to ascertain. The IB says that the United States knew of Headley much before his tryst with the Lashkar-e-Tayiba.
Indian investigators probing the link of arrested American national and Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Coleman Headley into the Mumbai 26/11 attacks have not stumbled upon any information regarding his local contacts while he was in India
The induction of David Coleman Headley, the arrested American national and a Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative, in the 26/11 case has given a whole new dimension to its ongoing trial. Legal experts say that there will be no delay in the ongoing trial against lone surviving gunmen Ajmal Kasab, and other terror accused Sabahuddin and Fahim Ansari.
The precision with which the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks were carried out is something that shocked the entire world. The attackers seemed to know their way around the targets -- in a similar manner as one would go about in his own home! This could have been possible, thanks to the nearly 18 hours of video footage that was made available to the ten gunmen who unleashed violence on Mumbai last year, killing scores of innocent people.
The arrest of David Coleman Headley, an American national held on terror charges by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Chicago earlier this month, is an indicator of the extent which the Lashkar-e-Tayiba could go up to carry an attack on Indian soil. The Lashkar is adopting new strategies to carry out terror strikes; and the latest one, according to the sources in the Intelligence Bureau, is the appointment of doctors.
Pakistan-based terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Tayiba had the backing of the Islamic nation's spy agency Inter Services Intelligence, which shared intelligence with Lashkar and provided protection to it in the Mumbai terror attacks, a media report said on Monday.American intelligence and counterterrorism officials were quoted by the New York Times as saying that LeT has quietly gained strength in recent years with the assistance of Pakistan's ISI.
A resolution of Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan would no longer satisfy the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and the terrorist outfit responsible for 26/11 and the attack on Indian Parliament would continue to pose a serious threat to both India and the western world in particular the US, top experts have told American lawmakers.
Inciting the public to raise funds for jihad (holy war) is not allowed to individuals or any organisation in Pakistan and is considered as treason, the Lahore high court has ruled even as it dismissed appeals of two terrorists convicted for raising funds for a proscribed terror outfit.
The former armyman -- identified as Sajid Mir -- has turned out to be Headley's handler in Pakistan and was tasking the American to learn praying like Jews so that he could conduct a recce of Jewish Centre Nariman House in Mumbai and the premises of a newspaper in Denmark, official sources said in Mumbai on Wednesday.
American national and Lashkar-e-Tayiba terror suspect David Headley had stayed in a hotel close to a Jewish centre in Pune during his visits to the Osha ashram in the city in 2008-09.
"It is not the Rahul that you think it is. It could be a pseudonym; it could be a code name but please be assured that it is not the Rahul that you think it is," he said at a press conference in an obvious reference to the Congress MP.
'Thirteen years have passed since the 26/11 terrorist attack in Mumbai. On today's anniversary, we remember the victims, including six Americans, and the resiliency of Mumbaikars. It is long overdue for the perpetrators to face justice,' Blinken said in a tweet on Friday.
A US congressional paper says the recent arrest of eleven men in Virginia, allegedly connected with the Lashkar, raises the prospects of a new terrorist threat in the US.
He also said it was for India to decide on dates for Foreign Secretary-level talks, postponed in the wake of the terror strike.
The 2008 Mumbai terror attack by the Lashkar-e-Tayiba was aimed at "dramatically" changing the future of South Asia and provoking a war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, a top United States counter-terrorism expert has said.
In related findings for India, the FATF in a report brought out last month, chronicled the use of banking channels to fund the activities of the banned terror group Hizb-ul-Mujahideen.
Former interior minister Rehman Malik has termed Pakistani-American terrorist's testimony in the 2008 Mumbai attack case as "a pack of lies".
'Elements like the LeT may see the fight against the coronavirus as an opportunity of a lifetime,' warns Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Most of the American military aid to Islamabad for counterinsurgency has gone into buying equipment to fight India, a former US diplomat has told lawmakers as he described Pakistan as a country which is "on the edge in many ways of being a failed state".
Lakhvi, who was on bail since 2015 in the Mumbai attack case, was arrested by the Counter-Terrorism Department.
The move comes after United States President Donald Trump accused Islamabad of giving nothing to the US but "lies and deceit" and providing "safe haven" to terrorists.
Union Home minister Rajnath Singh asked Opposition parties if they were prepared to apologise to the nation for their "malicious campaign" against PM Modi over the killing of Ishrat Jehan.
Strobe Talbott's tweet that hijackers may have wanted to use the missing Malaysian flight to attack Indian cities should be seen in the context of Lashkar-e-Tayiba's long standing plans to attack Indian cities like Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai from the skies. Vicky Nanjappa reports.
He had posted numerous messages threatening to attack individuals and gatherings of people who he believed were opponents of his radical beliefs.
Pervez Musharraf is contemplating a political front with jihadi groups to contest Pakistan's next election. Should the jihadi groups win a few seats, terrorist outfits will gain legitimacy in Pakistan, warns Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd).
'Illegal aggression of India on East Pakistan... Why Pakistan is avoiding advocating for Kashmiri people' written by "Professor Hafiz Mohammad Saeed" appeared in Daily Dunya (an Urdu publication of Dunya media group of Mian Amer Mahmood) on Sunday.
Mir was called "project manager" of the Mumbai attacks.
Trump said that the US will defeat its enemies with the full force of American might.
The 59-year-old Rana, a childhood friend of David Coleman Headley, was re-arrested on June 10 in Los Angeles on an extradition request by India for his involvement in the 2008 Mumbai terror attack in which 166 people, including six Americans, were killed.
The White House press secretary said LeT is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians in terrorist attacks, including a number of American citizens.
The JuD has been declared as a foreign terrorist organisation by the United States in June 2014.