FYI NYT: David C. Headley
Updated: March 26, 2010 David C. Headley is an American charged with helping plot the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, that left 163 people dead. He moved effortlessly between the United States, Pakistan and India for nearly seven years, training at a militant camp in Pakistan on five occasions, according to a plea agreement released by the Justice Department in March 2010. Mr. Headley divulged details of his life as a spy and militant as part of a plea agreement that will spare him the death penalty, said his lawyer, John T. Theis. His maximum sentence would be life imprisonment. He was charged with six counts of conspiracy to bomb public places and to murder and maim. As part of his plea, Mr. Headley has volunteered to talk to the authorities in India, Pakistan and Denmark. He was plotting with a Qaeda cell already in place in Europe to attack the Copenhagen offices of the newspaper that in 2005 had printed derisive cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed. Mr. Headley's profile he has roots in the United States and links to high levels of the Pakistani government and military makes him a highly unusual terror suspect. A resident of Chicago, Mr. Headley is accused of helping identify targets for a Pakistan-based terrorist group called Lashkar-e-Taiba, whose two-day attack on luxury hotels, a popular restaurant, a Jewish community center and a crowded train station brought India's financial capital to a halt and shocked the world. The attacks reignited tensions between India and Pakistan. Mr. Headley was able to use his Pakistani and American heritage to great advantage, playing up his American descent on his mother's side in India, and then behaving as a Pakistani in Pakistan, where his father was born. The authorities say that among Mr. Headley's conspirators was Ilyas Kashmiri, a Qaeda operative whom Western officials regard as one of the most dangerous Islamic militants operating in Pakistan's restive tribal areas. Mr. Headley kept his base in Chicago, even as he became more intensely involved in the web of militant activities in Pakistan. He sometimes trained for months at a time, and made five trips to Mumbai from 2006 to 2008 to scout locations, according to the plea agreement. When Mr. Headley was arrested on Oct. 3, 2009, he was headed to Pakistan to meet Mr. Kashmiri in North Waziristan to hand over 13 surveillance videos he had taken in Copenhagen. He was arrested with another Chicago resident, Tahawwur Rana, and charged with plotting to attack the Danish newspaper. The attack against the newpaper was planned to be particularly gruesome, with suicide attackers trying to kill everyone in the building. Mr. Headley, the son of a former Pakistani diplomat and an American socialite from Philadelphia, was born in Washington and raised in elite circles in Pakistan, where he attended a strict military high school. His parents divorced when he was young. At 17, he arrived in the United States to live with his free-spirited mother, whose lifestyle clashed with his disciplined Muslim upbringing. Friends and a relative said Mr. Headley dropped out of college and fell into trouble. In 1998 he was convicted of smuggling heroin into the United States, but avoided a long jail sentence by cooperating with the authorities. As part of a deal for a lighter sentence, he later conducted undercover operations in Pakistan for the Drug Enforcement Administration. He was in Pakistan for the drug agency from the late 1990s until at least 2001. By 2002, he was training with Lashkar, raising the possibility that he had made contact with the militants while still working for the drug agency. In 2006, he moved to Chicago, where he has a wife and children ------------------------------------ Post message: [email protected] Subscribe : [email protected] Unsubscribe : [email protected] List owner : [email protected] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
