To hit India, Lashkar looked to US man

Wed, Oct 28 05:48 AM

Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) planned to use a US national to carry out a major terrorist attack in India, US investigating authorities said on Tuesday.

David Coleman Headley, 49, was arrested this month by FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force at O'Hare International Airport before boarding a flight to Philadelphia, intending to travel on to Pakistan.

Headley along with a Canadian citizen of Pakistani origin, have been arrested on charges of plotting a terror attack against a Danish newspaper, which had published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005, officials said.

Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48, was also a resident of Chicago and was arrested by the FBI on October 18. Rana is the owner of several businesses in Chicago, New York and Toronto.

According to the FBI affidavit filed in a Chicago court, Headley was in close contact with Ilyas Kashmiri and several unidentified leaders of the LeT. Kashmiri is the operational chief of PoK section of HuJI, a Pakistani-based terrorist organisation with links to al-Qaeda. Kashmiri, currently believed to be in Pakistan's restive Waziristan tribal region, issued a statement this month that he was alive and working with al-Qaeda.

The identities of other LeT leaders, who are associated with Kashmiri, have not been revealed and is mentioned as "LeT Member A" and "LeT Member B" in the affidavit.

"In July and August 2009, Headley exchanged a series of e-mails with LeT Member A, including an exchange in which Headley asked if the Denmark project was on hold, and whether a visit to India that LeT Member A had asked him to undertake was for the purpose of surveilling targets for a new terrorist attack," the affidavit said. "These e-mails reflect that LeT Member A was placing a higher priority on using Headley to assist in planning a new attack in India than on completing the planned attack in Denmark." After this time, Headley and LeT Member A allegedly continued focusing on the plan with Kashmiri to attack the newspaper, rather than working with LeT, the complaint says.

In January and July this year, Headley travelled to Copenhagen and other European countries. His trips were arranged by Rana.

After returning to Chicago in August, Headley allegedly used coded language to repeatedly inquire if "Individual A" had been in touch with Kashmiri regarding planning for the attack, and expressing concern that Individual A's communications with Kashmiri had been cut off. The FBI said Headley stated in conversations last month that he intended to travel to Pakistan in October to meet with Individual A and Kashmiri, and he was arrested on October 3.

Headley's luggage had a memory stick that contained approximately 10 short videos of Copenhagen, including video focused on the Jyllands-Posten building in King's Square as well as a nearby Danish military barracks and the exterior and interior of Copenhagen's central train station. PTI

'Pak may become epicentre of extremism'

WASHINGTON: DUBBING Pakistan as the headquarters of al-Qaeda, influential US Senator John Kerry has said the nuclear-armed country with fledgling democracy and strained ties with India could become the epicentre of extremism in the world. "This (Pakistan) can become the epicentre: the Hakkani network, Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Islamic Jihad — the various groups that are there, and the hedges that still take place because of the India and Pakistan relationship that has not yet transformed to modernity," Kerry said at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington-based think-tank.

"There are realities that we have to continue to deal with," Kerry, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said. PTI

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