The Chicago trial of a man accused of working with terrorist to plot the 2008 Mumbai attacks opened Monday amid fears it could further inflame regional tensions. Chicago businessman Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 50, is charged with providing material support to terrorists by acting as a messenger and providing a cover for a key figure in the bloody 60-hour siege of India's largest city in which 166 people died.
David Coleman Headley - Rana's old friend from military school in Pakistan - has been co-operating with prosecutors since his 2009 arrest and will be a star witness at Rana's trial. Jurors are also expected to hear a series of conversations between the two men that was secretly recorded by the FBI. Headley formally admitted to 12 terrorism charges in March 2010 after prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty or to allow him to be extradited to either India, Pakistan or Denmark to face related charges.
The Washington-born son of a former Pakistani diplomat and an American woman, Headley admitted to spending months scooping out sites for the Mumbai siege and plotting to kill a Danish cartoonist. In a plot that reads like a movie thriller, Headley spent two years casing Mumbai, even taking boat tours around the city's harbour to identify landing sites for the attackers and befriending Bollywood stars as part of his cover.
But in pre-trial motions, his lawyers proposed defending Rana's actions by arguing that he believed Headley was working on behalf of ISI, not terrorists. Headley testified to a grand jury that he had told Rana about "my meetings with Sajid and others in Lashkar" and "how I had been asked to perform espionage work for ISI," court records show.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.