LeT paid $28k for Headley recces

NEW DELHI: A federal grand jury indictment unsealed in Chicago on Thursday has revealed that Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) bankrolled David Coleman Headley’s recce trips to Mumbai. According to the investigators, Headley was paid $28,000 for his repeated trips to India for surveillance of the terror targets.

In an indictment filed before the Chicago court, federal prosecutors said that the Lashkar operative, on the direction of his LeT handlers, changed his name from Daood Gilani to David Coleman Headley, on February 15, 2006, in Philadelphia, enabling him to present himself in India as an American who was neither Muslim nor Pakistani.

Headley’s LeT handlers had showed him a Styrofoam mock-up of the Taj Mahal hotel and provided him with a global positioning system device and taught him how to use it to record the locations of possible landing sites and potential targets in Mumbai, which Headley then used during his surveillance trips in April and July 2008, the chargesheet has stated.

In the new document, Chicago businessman Tahawwur Hussain Rana has been charged with helping Headley in the Mumbai terror attacks and being part of a conspiracy hatched in Pakistan to attack a Danish newspaper that published cartoons of Prophet Mohammed. It said Rana knew of the planned attacks in 2006, and that he allowed Headley to travel as a representative of his Chicago-based immigration business when the latter went overseas to scout locations for the attacks.

The grand jury also indicted Ilyas Kashmiri, a former Pakistani special forces commando and a terrorist leader in contact with Al Qaeda, as well as Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, a retired Major in the Pakistani military. Both are believed to be in Pakistan.

The two terror suspects had allegedly attended terror training camps in Pakistan between 2002 and 2003. According to the charges, unnamed Lashkar member A, who served as a ‘handler’ for Headley and another person associated with Lashkar, advised Headley in late 2005 that he would be travelling to India to perform surveillance of potential targets.

The investigators said that they were planning the Mumbai strikes three years in advance. In the spring of 2006, Lashkar member A and a Lashkar associate discussed with Headley the idea that he could open an immigration office in Mumbai as a cover for his surveillance activities. In approximately June 2006, Headley allegedly travelled to Chicago, advised Rana of his assignment to scout potential targets in India, and obtained approval from Rana, who owned First World Immigration Services in Chicago and elsewhere, to open a First World office in Mumbai as cover for his activities.

Rana allegedly directed an individual associated with the First World to prepare documents supporting Headley’s cover story of opening a First World office in Mumbai, and advised Headley how to obtain a visa for travel to India. Headley misrepresented his birth name, his father’s true name and the purpose of his travel in his visa application.

The indictment said that Headley made five trips to Mumbai — in September 2006, February and September 2007 and April and July 2008 — each time taking photographs and making videotapes of various potential targets. It said before each trip, Lashkar members and associates allegedly instructed Headley regarding specific locations where he was to conduct surveillance and the latter travelled to Pakistan to report on the results of his surveillance.

Meanwhile, the sloppy security system in India also encouraged Headley to conduct recce of Jewish Chabad houses in various cities even after the 26/11 attacks. On the direction of his LeT bosses, Headley returned to India in March 2009 to carry out recce of not only the National Defence College in Delhi but also Jewish prayer centres across Delhi, Goa, Pushkar and Pune.