The trial of Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Hussain Rana, which began in Chicago on May 17, has witnessed its share of explosive revelations by prime witness David Coleman Headley.Both Rana and Headley are allegedly operatives of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and had planned the terror strike in Mumbai along with the leaders of the terror outfit.Rana, a 50-year-old Chicago businessman, has been charged with planning the attacks, providing material support to the LeT.
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.
Watching the 2008 Mumbai carnage live from Pakistan, terror outfit Lashkar-e-Tayiba handlers guided the attackers on phone and even asked them to change tactics to challenge the advancing commandos.
Although LeT operative David Coleman Headley says nothing new in his recent confession in a US court that Pakistani ISI helped Lashkar-e-Tayiba execute the 26/11 terror strikes in Mumbai, it still vindicates India's stand, reports Vicky Nanjappa.
Dawn's Cyril Almeida said he had triple checked the facts on his story, which reported about the rift between the civilian government and the military in Pakistan.
The Lashkar-e-Tayiba and other Pakistani terror groups having links with the Al Qaeda may pose a danger to the United States with their ability to trigger a major crisis for nuclear-armed Pakistan, including a war with India, which may require US intervention.
US State Department's annual 'Country Reports on Terrorism for the year 2009' said the Lashkar, said Pakistan's FATA and northwest continues to be a "safe haven" for Al Qaeda and Afghan insurgents.
India is likely to get access to Tahawwur Hussain Rana, the Pakistani Canadian accused in the Mumbai terror attack case, after completion of his trial in an American court next month.
Sources also told PTI that Judge Awan was likely to go on leave for three weeks in the near future and this could further delay proceedings in the trial.
Pakistani authorities have decided to hold the trial of five Lashkar-e-Tayiba operatives arrested in connection with the 2008 Mumbai attacks in a high-security jail in Rawalpindi, after learning that the outlawed group had made preparations to snatch the arrested men while they were being taken from prison to court.
Vicky Nanjappa predicts embarrasing days ahead for Pakistani intelligence agency ISI in the aftermath of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's killing
Pakistani authorities have arrested another suspect in the Mumbai terror attacks case, as the anti-terror court conducting the trial of the five accused Lashkar-e-Tayiba operatives on Saturday adjourned the hearing till September 5. Sources said a newly-arrested suspect, identified only as Yunus, was produced in the court today by the Federal Investigation Agency, which is probing the Mumbai attacks. The judge remanded Yunus to police custody for 10 days.
Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Headley's reported claim that Ishrat Jahan, killed in an encounter with police in Gujarat in 2004, was a suicide bomber of the terror outfit has been contested by the father of the man killed along with her.
Home Minister P Chidambaram will arrive in Islamabad on Friday on a two-day visit to Pakistan during which he is expected to press for action against Lashkar-e-Tayiba founder Hafiz Saeed and seek voice samples of handlers of the Mumbai attackers.
The sentencing of Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Coleman Headley is expected to happen only by early next year, after the trial of co-accused Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Hussain Rana is complete, Headley's lawyer said in Chicago.
After much delay and discussions, the interrogation of Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Headley by a team of the National Investigation Agency has finally come to an end.Sources close to the members of the investigating team told rediff.com that the Pakistani American terror operative proved to be a tough nut to crack.Headley was well prepared to face the NIA team's questions and throughout the interrogations, he stuck to the earlier responses.
India is expected to seek voice samples of Lashkar-e-Tayiba founder Hafiz Saeed and other handlers of 26/11 attackers during the visit of Home Minister P Chidambaram to Islamabad later this month.
American official Raymond Davis, arrested for killing two Pakistanis in Lahore, may have headed a covert Central Intelligence Agency team that was tasked to secretly gather intelligence on the Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Tayiba, which the United States feels is getting out of the shadows of the Pakistan army to launch a campaign of jihad against it and Europe.
On the eve of third anniversary of 26/11 Mumbai attacks, former home secretary G K Pillai on Friday accused the United States of entering into plea bargain with one of the key accused David Headley without taking India into confidence.
The US slapped sanctions on four Pakistani militants linked to the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Al-Qaeda, with one of them having links to Dawood Ibrahim, for their involvement in a series of terrorist activities including bombings in the Mumbai train and Samjhauta Express.
Underworld don and India's most wanted fugitive Dawood Ibrahim, mastermind of the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, figures third on the Forbes' Most Wanted Fugitives list.
'The target for all our counter-terror operations ought to be Pakistani Punjab's population,' argues Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Ajmal Amir Kasab may be awarded a death sentence, but the three crucial men behind the attack -- LeT founder Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, the outfit's operations commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, chief plotter of 26/11 Sajid Mir, continue to be on the run.
A Pakistani anti-terror court has adjourned the trial of seven suspects, including Lashkar-e-Tayiba commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack case till February 26 after prosecutors sought more time for the Lahore high court to decide a related petition.
Bruce Riedel, senior National Security Council official in the Clinton Administration, who spearheaded President Obama's strategic review on Afghanistan and Pakistan, told rediff.com that for all the Pakistani leadership assurances that the ISI has severed its links with terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and the Taliban, the ISI's association with them is as entrenched as ever.
Union Home Secretary Gopal K Pillai said a Commission may even be sent to the United States for getting evidence, may be from Headley, his wife and from other people, for which it would talk to the US authorities.
Sources told rediff.com that during the course of investigation, the names of three persons belonging to the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, who managed this entire operation from the Gulf have been uncovered. The names of the three persons that cropped during the probe are Wali alias Shameem, Muslim Basheer and Haroon. All the three persons are believed to be of Pakistani origin and are believed to have been deputed in the Gulf to raise funds and monitor operations planned for India.
A Pakistani anti-terrorism court conducting the trial of seven suspects linked to the 2008 Mumbai attacks has adjourned proceedings till May 8, apparently in anticipation of an Indian court's verdict against Ajmal Kasab on May 3.
A Pakistani anti-terrorism court on Friday adjourned the trial of Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and six others charged with involvement in the Mumbai attacks till February 17 after prosecutors sought more time for the Lahore high court to decide on a related petition. The prosecution team told anti-terrorism court Judge Rana Nisar Ahmed that more time was needed for the high court to decide on its plea.
Interacting with the media at a roundtable meeting in Washington, Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said on Monday that he needed more evidence from India about the Lashkar-e-Tayiba's involvement in the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai.Emphatically stating that Pakistani soil would not be used for extremist activities, and particularly for attacks on neighbouring India, Gilani said, "We don't want our soil used against any country."
Months before the Federal Bureau of Investigation finally arrested David Coleman Headley, his Moroccan wife Faiza Outalha had tried to warn the FBI about the Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative's terror links.
Bangladesh's elite security force on Thursday arrested a Pakistani national suspected to be a top leader of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayiba who was operating in Bangladesh in the guise of a businessman, an official said.
After the ice-breaking foreign secretary-level talks on February 25, India has conveyed to Pakistan its willingness to hold the second round of parleys, but is yet to get any response from its neighbour. India also has not heard anything from Pakistan on the three dossiers given to Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir by her Indian counterpart Nirupama Rao during the FS-level talks. The dossiers contained the names of the 34 Pakistani terrorists wanted in India.
Dismissing concerns about the plea agreement between the United States government and Pakistani-American Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Coleman Headley, Home Minister P Chidambaram on Friday said the deal was not a 'setback' for India's probe into the terror attack on Mumbai. Headley, who was arrested in October last year in Chicago by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has pleaded guilty to charges of planning and helping carry out the attack on Mumbai.
Pakistani-American Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Coleman Headley, accused of plotting the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks and conspiring to target a Danish newspaper, pleaded guilty on Thursday before a United States court. Headley, 49, who was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's joint terrorism task force on October 3, 2009, told US District Judge Harry Leinenweber that he wanted to change his plea to guilty, in an apparent bid to get a lighter sentence.
The Indian government will be 'satisfied' if Pakistani-American Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Coleman Headley, who pleaded guilty in a United States court to his involvement in the Mumbai terror attacks, is awarded a life sentence, Home Secretary G K Pillai said on Friday. "The US attorney general has advised a sentence of life imprisonment. If he gets a sentence of life imprisonment, I don't think the government of India will be unsatisfied," he said.
Law enforcement sources rubbished allegations that Headley was a double agent for US intelligence and that this was why he was not being made available for interrogation by Indian intelligence.
Official access for Indian investigators probing the Mumbai terror attack to Pakistani-American Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Coleman Headley will help prove to the world Pakistan's involvement in the 26/11 strikes, the Bharatiya Janata Party has stated."It (consequences of his pleading guilty before a United States court) is a mixed bag. As we cannot get extradition, it is a loss. But, at the same time, we can get official access," BJP said.
Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley had participated in terror camps being run by the Lashkar-e-Tayiba in Pakistan, despite promises by the then president Parvez Musharraf in 2002 to the George W Bush administration, that all such facilities will be shut down. Headley, a LeT operative arrested in October 2009 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had attended five such training camps run by the terror outfit between 2002 and 2003, according to Headley's plea agreement.
A top United States intelligence official has said that the probe in the Mumbai terror siege is an 'excellent example' of cooperation between India and the United States, even as Indian authorities are smarting over the US administration's refusal to hand over Pakistani-American Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Coleman Headley on charges related to his involvement in the 26/11 attack.
