Headley was the first one to shed light on the involvement of the ISI-LeT joint venture in the creation of the IM

Excerpts from Shishir Gupta’s book which traces the genesis of the terror group

Banglore Mirror July 18, 2011

While reams could be written on 26/11, our focus is on the intersection and overlap between LeT-ISI and the Indian Mujahideen. The role of the Indian Mujahideen was peripheral, but it was in the investigation of the Mumbai attacks that one could trace out the birth and origins of this group and the Pakistani involvement behind its creation. Had it not been for the mistakes mentioned earlier, the Mumbai attacks would also have been blamed on the Shahbuddin Ghouri brigade of the Indian Mujahideen. The terrorists involved in the Mumbai attacks were all carrying fake identity cards of Arunodaya Degree and Post-Graduate College, Vedre Complex, Dilsukhnagar, Hyderabad. Kasab was Samir Dinesh Chaudhari from Bengaluru; Ismail Khan was Naresh Vilas Varma of Hyderabad, Imran Babar was Arjun Kumar of Hyderabad; Nasir Umar was Dinesh Kumar of Hyderabad; Hafiz Arshad was Raghubir Singh of Ahmedabad; Abdul Rehman was Arun Sharma of Navi Delhi and Fahadullah was Rohil Patil of Hyderabad. Not only this, a virulent e-mail from the so-called group Mujahideen Hyderabad Deccan was sent to all the prominent TV news channels and print media during the Mumbai terror attack. Highlighting the plight of Muslims in India, the e-mail, written in chaste Hindi, said that the Mumbai attack was the revenge for the communal riots and the Babri Masjid demolition at the hands of Hindu zealots. If the Kuber had been sunk by the LeT terrorists, Ajmal Kasab not survived and arrested and there were no telephone intercepts, India would have found it extremely difficult to prove the Pakistani involvement. Just as in the case of the 26/11 attacks, it was investigations at the American end that provided the big picture of Pakistani complicity in Islamist terror attacks against India. It also became evident that jihadist terrorist groups like the LeT and the JeM were part of the larger Pakistani strategy to contain and hurt India. On 3 February 2010, former director of US National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair said before the US Senate Committee that the overall Pakistani strategy was to use militants as an important part of its strategic arsenal to counter India's military and economic advantages. This view was reinforced by a secret cable sent in September 2009 by US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson, which Wikileaks released in December 2010, stating that Islamabad would not abandon the LeT even if the US was to pump more aid into that country. If the LeT-ISI combine is the heart of this jihadist-terrorist nexus against India, the Indian Mujahideen group is another manifestation of the same with the controls in Pakistan. The origin of the Indian Mujahideen and its true mentors was revealed only after David Coleman Headley, a Pakistan-born American national formerly known as Daood Syed Gilani, was arrested by the FBI on 3 October 2009. It was Headley who identified the voices of Abu Al Qama, Sajid Majid alias Wasi Bhai and Abu Qahafa in the 26/11 control room in Karachi. The fourth person in the 26/11 control room who guided the ten gunmen is suspected to be an Indian with the nom de guerre of Jindal Bhai as identified by Ajmal Kasab. While arrested terrorist Amjad Khaja identified the fourth voice in the control room as Syed Zabiuddin Ansari of Maharashtra others believe that it could be Mohammed Abdul Aziz alias Ashraf alias Gidda, a radical Islamist who had fought the jihad in Bosnia and Chechnya and now works with the ISI. Both Zabiuddin Ansari and Gidda were members of SIMI in the 1990s. While India is still to get the voice samples of those Pakistanis accused in 26/11, the final word on the Indian in the The Indian Mujahideen 226 26/11 control room is still to be said as Headley could not identify the fourth voice. The Indian intelligence agencies, and visa and immigration officials were caught napping; they were oblivious to the fact that Headley had visited India nine times between September 2006 and March 2009 in order to survey Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Jaipur and other places to help the LeT target them. Headley was arrested by the FBI, which had been informed by MI-6 that he was in touch with Al Qaida operatives in Europe, at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport while en route to Pakistan as part of the global conspiracy to target and attack Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper that had earned the ire of Muslims all over the world for publishing blasphemous cartoons of Prophet Mohammed in September 2005. Headley's two associates in the conspiracy (called the Mickey Mouse project) to attack the Danish newspaper personnel and facilities were two top-notch Pakistan-based terrorists: Syed Mohammed Abdur Rehman Hashmi alias Abdur Rehman Syed alias Pasha and Ilyas Kashmiri. While Headley was the first one to shed light on the involvement of the ISI-LeT joint venture in the creation of the Indian Mujahideen, Saeed and Kashmiri were the front officers of Islamist jihad against India. HuJI veteran Kashmiri's involvement in jihad against India began in 1994 with Omar Saeed Sheikh. Abdur Rehman Syed was the controller of the Karachi Project, so called by Headley. But before we go into Headley's revelations on the Karachi Project in detail, it is important to understand Ilyas Kashmiri, for he is the perfect example of the fact that there may be group loyalties or specified target areas of operation in jihad but the master, the ISI, remains the same. Excerpted with permission from Hachette India. Price: 550 Indian Mujahideen North India group South India group Atik and Sadiq collaborated on the instructions of Amir Raza and Riyaz Bhatkal to execute the 2008 Ahmedabad/ Surat serial blasts. Afzal Usmani was their ground soldier for the project.

The many faces of a homegrown terrorist

By Dinesh Sharma

Asia Times
June 16, 2011


While American media were apoplectic over "Weiner-Gate", a global terrorism trial came to an end in Chicago.

Americans shocked by congressman Anthony Weiner's aberrant behavior, namely, the leakage of his private self

represented as tweets in the public square, may not have fully paid attention to the mind of a terrorist.

There is a common element between the aberrant and the deranged - dissociation. In the age of Twitter, where no

private transgression can remain hidden for very long, we can venture to make the linkage between the private and

the public, the individual and the collective, and perhaps better understand the psychology of terrorism.

In the age of social media, privacy as we knew it is a thing of the


past; almost everything that we define as personal can now be accessed in the public domain.

In the past week, those concerned with homegrown terrorism were shocked to learn about the tightly

compartmentalized - complex, multiple and divided - chambers inside the mind of a Pakistani-American terrorist,

David Coleman Headley, who managed to penetrate and dupe intelligence authorities across many cultural and

international borders.

When United States Federal authorities finally nabbed him in October 2009, they released a complaint against him

and his alleged accomplice, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, for plotting attacks against a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-

Posten, over the printing an inflammatory caricature.

In December 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation also accused Headley of planning the massive 2008 Mumbai

attacks in India in which 164 people were killed; of providing material support to a terrorist group, Lashkar-e-

Tayyiba (LeT), and aiding in the murder of American citizens.

Headley, who pleaded guilty to 12 counts, faces life in prison and a hefty fine. He has in turn fingered his

friend Rana for a role in the Mumbai attacks. Headley cut a plea deal to avoid extradition to India, Denmark or

Pakistan and not to face the death penalty. The trial that concluded on June 9 found Rana guilty on two counts of

plotting against the Danish newspaper and aiding the LeT, but did not find complicity in the planning of the

Mumbai attacks.

In addition to confirming the now well-publicized role of Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) in the

planning of the Mumbai attacks, the trial of Headley brought to light the "multiple personalities" or

"dissociative identities" of a home-grown terrorist, offering an object lesson to psychologists and security

experts alike. His complicated story has already generated a documentary; it might even be ideal for a HBO

docudrama.

A quick glance at Headley's profile reveals the presence of deep fissures, splits or dissociations in his

personality profile at different phases of his life. Not surprisingly, Headley was indeed diagnosed with a

multiple personality disorder (MPD) in 1992, so I learned while trying to confirm my clinical hypothesis. However,

the circumstances surrounding his illness and diagnosis remain murky.

He was known as Daood Sayed Gilani in the Pakistani-American community of New York, Chicago and Philadelphia as

well as in his ancestral homeland of Pakistan. Before turning into a terrorist, in the 1980s and 1990s Headley was

a small-business owner running mostly bars and video rental stores. In 2001, to absolve himself of multiple drug

charges for smuggling heroin from Pakistan, he became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Authority (DEA).

While conducting undercover surveillance for the DEA, Headley started to make contacts deep within LeT during 2002

and 2003. "He just turns around immediately and betrays everybody when it's convenient for him," says one

terrorism analyst.

After repeat visits with the LeT, one of the more effective step-children of the ISI, he began to assume

responsibility for the execution of the 2008 Mumbai attacks and other terrorist activities. "A dream come true for

LeT," according to another security analyst. In Headley, the LeT found "the perfect terrorist", an American guy

with money, a US passport and the ability go in and out of the country without any suspicions or interrogations.

In 2006, Headley dropped his Islamic name, adopted an American identity and his mother's surname to hide his

Pakistani-Muslim contacts and make travel to India easier. At the time, even his close friends and associates

could not have imagined what he was planning. "David Headley is insane ... no person with a brain could do these

things," said Rana's wife.

The clinical diagnosis of MPD is not easily obtained or simply doled out; it constitutes a rare psychopathological

condition in the general population. But in the case of this Pakistani-American jihadi, who was born in 1960 in

Washington DC, not too far from the steps of the Capitol, it seems to fit.

In 1992 and during other stressful life-transitions, Headley may have displayed the full-blown markers of MPD as

outlined in the diagnostic and statistical manual of the American Psychiatric Association (APA):
Disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states, one rooted in Pakistan and the

other in America.
Dissociation of important personal information from everyday events as a result of living two or more separate

lives
Significant distress and impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning.
Headley's different personalities were not seen as a "normal" part of a broadly accepted cultural framework.

Developmentally, the divided lives of Headley may have begun at the beginning. He is the son of a Pakistani

diplomat, Sayed Salim Gilani, and an American mother, Serill Headley, both of whom were employed at the Pakistani

Embassy in Washington at the time of his birth.

Headley spent part of his childhood at an elite preparatory school for the military, Cadet College Hasan Abdal in

Punjab province, after his father divorced and moved the family back to Pakistan. Raised as a devout Muslim, at

this school he may have received a strong dose of radicalization. He met his childhood friend and later apparent

accomplice, Rana, at the military academy and the two became life-long friends and business associates.

The Islamic world of his father would crash head-on with the secular lifestyle his mother offered him in the US.

In 1977, at the age of 17 due to the changing political climate in Pakistan, Headley's American mother moved him

to Philadelphia where she ran a bar called the Khyber Pass.

During turbulent teenage years, while experimenting with American values Headley began to show signs of fanaticism

by rebelling against his mother's open or "libertine" choices and professed to dislike all non-Muslims.

Headley himself could not have imagined that his hatred was so deep-seated that it would propel him so far along

the path of jihad. He managed to infiltrate the ISI, the LeT, the DEA and dodge the Indian security forces by

assuming different disguises, just as he courted and divorced a string of women in the US and Pakistan.

"Most people have contradictions in their lives, but they learn to reconcile them," William Headley, Headley's

uncle told a reporter, "But Daood could never do that. The left side does not speak to the right side."

Headley's fanaticism, rooted in a sickness, seems hidden and tucked away in the compartments of his deranged mind.

Its low-grade variant may be found at much reduced frequency and wavelength among those who live with divided

loyalties across different cultural and national boundaries.

This type of homegrown anti-Americanism may be more virulent than we think, much more dangerous than the salacious

tweets sent from a US congressman's personal blackberry.

Dinesh Sharma is author of Barack Obama in Hawaii and Indonesia: The Making of a Global President (ABC-

CLIO/Praeger, 2011).

Trial and terror: David Headley Coleman and Pakistan's ISI

What a Chicago trial reveals about Pakistan's involvement in the 2008 Mumbai attack may force a huge shift in US foreign policy


Josh Shahryar
Guardian, Monday 16 May 2011 16.06 BST

Mumbai terror attack 2008, Chicago trial of David Headley Coleman 2011
Indian Army soldiers taking position outside the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, 28 November 2008. The Chicago trial, starting 16 May 2011, of David Headley Coleman will open a window on who plotted the Mumbai attack, which is likely to inflame tension between India and Pakistan. Photograph: AFP/Sajjad Hussain

The killing of Osama bin Laden, deep inside Pakistani territory, has sparked another vigorous debate about Pakistan's partnership with the west in the "war on terror". This time, the debate has finally gotten beyond just hints that some power-holders in Pakistan are supporting terrorism. His death has clearly swayed the American public's opinion, which by a large margin believes that Pakistan knew exactly where Osama bin Laden was, but refused to give him up.

That there are elements inside Pakistan's military that are sympathetic to al-Qaida and other terrorist organisations has been accepted for a long time. But clear evidence so far has either not been divulged to the public, or has been lacking in consistency for concrete action to be taken against those actors in Pakistan. But as important a piece of the larger puzzle as Bin Laden's death may be, the case of David Coleman Headley is likely going to remove many doubts about Pakistan's double game and may end up bringing far more dire consequences for Pakistan.

Headley, a Pakistani-American, is soon to appear in a federal court in Chicago as a prosecution witness against Rana Tawahhur Hussein, a Chicago area businessman of Pakistani descent. Hussein is accused of providing financial and logistical support to terrorists who carried out the deadly Mumbai terror attack in 2008.

A first generation immigrant, Headley was born Daood Sayed Gilani. The son of a Pakistani father and an American mother, Headley changed his name to a more non-Pakistani-sounding one to avoid suspicion and to make it easier for him to travel to south Asia, where he was recruited by the Pakistani secret service, the ISI. With help from ISI, Headley was instrumental in the Mumbai terror attack that left over 100 people dead and hundreds more injured or at least that is what he claims.

His story is not only unique, in that he managed to avoid detection for years while carrying out undercover work for terrorists – and as an informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration – but also in that when arrested in 2009, he was willing to tell all about the ISI's connection to the attack. He's already divulged that several Pakistani ISI officials, including a shadowy figure named Major Iqbal, were involved with him in organising the attack. Major Iqbal and others trained him for months and funded his intelligence-gathering missions in India, during which he even stayed at the Taj Mahal Palace & Towers Hotel, which was later to be the scene of much violence during the attack.

Headley's case is far more damning for the Pakistani authorities than the case of Faisal Shahzad, who, like Headley, made his way into Pakistan to receive terrorist training, but ended up in the arms of the Pakistani Taliban. It is even more important than Bin Laden's death because dead men don't talk. Headley's testimony – if substantiated – will finally provide ample evidence to identify at least some of the men inside Pakistan's military-intelligence apparatus who are cooperating with terrorists as a means to further Pakistan's military and diplomatic interests.

To be sure, Pakistan is prepared to offset the damage and deal with critical lawmakers in Washington who want more concrete action against Pakistan in the aftermath of Bin Laden's death. To soothe relations, they've managed to circulate the news that the ISI is initiating a manhunt for the capture of the Taliban's leader Mullah Omar, who is believed to be hiding in the country's southwest – many already suspect he's being sheltered by the Pakistani government. On the other hand, Pakistani lawmakers are also threatening to cut Nato supply lines into Afghanistan from Pakistan unless the US stops drone attacks on suspected terrorists targets inside Pakistani territory.

Of course, Pakistan has many more wanted terrorists inside its territory, which it can offer up to regain Washington's favour when Headley's case starts getting more coverage in the United States. The war in Afghanistan will also undoubtedly constantly remind the White House that it needs Pakistan in order to supply troops and aid into Afghanistan. But what Pakistan is not prepared for is the role India is likely to play once Headley gives his testimony at the hearing.

While Bin Laden's case was taken up mostly by the American public, which can be quietly ignored unless an election is looming, and the government of Afghanistan, which really has nothing to offer to the US government and is thus irrelevant, Headley's case is different. Not only does India – the target of the deadliest attack in which Headley was involved – is furious over Pakistan's involvement in that attack, but it is also one of the largest trading partners of the United States, with over $12bn-worth of trade in the first four months of 2011 alone.

And India is in no mood to play the peaceful neighbour when evidence keeps piling up that corroborates Pakistan's involvement in the deaths of innocent Indians.

Last week, India started large-scale military exercises close to Pakistan's borders. Over 20,000 troops were involved at a time when India has already denounced Pakistan as a sanctuary for terrorists. The countries have already fought three wars over the disputed region of Kashmir, which is currently divided between them. Just this weekend, a border skirmish between the two countries' armies left 1 dead and 15 injured.

The Indian media is already upping the ante, and coverage of Headley's case has been frenzied and almost continuous in the country's newspapers. This means that not only the government of India, but also ordinary Indians are enraged at what they deem is US inaction against an enemy they perceive to be directly involved in terrorist attacks on their soil.

What the US government faces now is a reckoning that should had been made long ago with regard to Pakistan's support for terrorists. And for Pakistan, time is running out. When Headley's testimony starts making headlines in the US media, as the case of Zacarias Moussaoui did, the Indian government is likely to start pressuring the US government to force Pakistan into purging elements supporting terrorists from the ranks of its military and intelligence service.

That pressure will not just carry the weight of truth and reason, but also the might of billions of dollars in trade and a partnership that is flourishing economically and diplomatically. Given the anger felt towards Pakistan in India after the Mumbai terror attack, there might be another confrontation looming between the two nations which the US cannot possibly afford while it is engaged in stamping out insurgency in Afghanistan and in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas. The question is: does Pakistan realise that it may finally be losing its leverage with the US?

The Ugly world of Shiv Sena fixers

Praveen Swami &
Rahi Gaikwad
The Hindu
May 26, 2011

‘Tell them the money is for poverty, unemployment', Rege told Headley while demanding millions to be paid into tax-dodge trust

NEW DELHI: Late in the summer of 1998, as Lashkar-e-Taiba jihadist David Coleman Headley desperately searched for a means to assassinate Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray and hit a brick wall, he ran into a small-time party apparatchik with big dreams — and an even bigger appetite for cash.

Rajaram Rege's relentless pursuit of money, and Headley's unremitting search for a means to kill — laid bare in documents filed by prosecutors in the Chicago court where 26/11 suspect Tahawwur Rana is being tried — have provided jurors with some low farce in the midst of an otherwise grim proceedings.

But it provides riveting insights into the grim world of political operators and fixers who feed off the Shiv Sena's clout.

In a meeting with the Lashkar's supreme leader, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, Headley had been told the Hindutva group needed to be “taught a lesson.” He sought, therefore, to conduct reconnaissance inside the Shiv Sena's heavily guarded central office in Mumbai's crowded Dadar area.

Vilas Varkey, a physical fitness instructor Headley met at a local gym, provided an introduction to Mr. Rege, whose LinkedIn profile identifies him as an information technology officer with an Indian electronics firm.

Mr. Rege was introduced to Headley as a public relations officer for Mr. Thackeray's son. The Shiv Sena and Mr. Rege both deny he held that post, but admit he is linked to the party.

“Headley told me he wanted to see Sena Bhavan. I told him it was not a tourist spot and asked him to go away,” Mr. Rege says.

That wasn't quite the whole truth. Following their encounter at Mumbai's Shiv Sena central office on May 18, 2008, documents filed by prosecutors in the ongoing trial of Chicago-based Rana show that Mr. Rege sent Headley what might be called a business plan.

His pitch was crude — and not just in its grasp of spelling and grammar.

“I am politically and socially very well connected here in Bombay (mumbai), gujarat and delhi [sic., throughout],” he wrote. “Projects worth 10,000 crores sanctioned by govt are with me. are you getting my point????”

Mr. Rege's mail sent a frisson of excitement through the ISI and the Lashkar. “How should I respond,” Headley asked in a May 19, 2008, e-mail to his ISI handler.

The man Headley knew as ‘Major Iqbal' wrote back the next day. “I red [sic] your mail and gave a cool thought to all this,” he wrote. ‘Major Iqbal' counselled Headley to “engage raja by helping him getting seminars and confesses [sic., conferences] in usa.”

The following Friday, on May 23, 2008, Headley wrote back to Mr. Rege. He promised to set up a meeting with his bosses in the United States to discuss the Sena workers' business proposals — and also his pleas for a suitable job abroad.

Headley's mail also makes it clear that the two men had discussed the prospect of a western lecture tour where Mr. Rege could raise funds for the party. He wrote: “If it is possible, you should have some big name personality from your party to accompany you to America for maximum results. Would you be able to do that? This would guarantee all fund-raising activities to be a big success.”

In his statements to Indian and U.S. investigators, Headley has said he was in fact considering the prospect of assassinating Mr. Thackeray on the tour. The plan was doomed to fail: Mumbai's would-be Führer has a deep fear of flying — a fear that has led him to never leave the city, let alone venture abroad.

But Mr. Rege replied the same day, returning, with obsessive focus, to his main theme: “How to get both of us financially benefitted.”

In India, he wrote, “there are many huge projects of constructions, dams, roads, flyovers, bridges, cannals, power, agriculture etc. these projects I have from govt. sector as well as private sector.” For a share of the pie, he explained, “we have to give under table money and manupulate the tendor.”

Mr. Rege wanted his consultancy fees, which “renges from a few hundred lacs to few hundred crores of indian rupees,” and an additional “minimum if 10 lac US$ of donations,” paid into a trust he ran in Mumbai, which “gives me saving Income Tax.”

If there were questions, he said, without the least trace of irony, “You can simply tell them you are generating funds for well fare of mumbai people for poverty, unemployment, education, medical etc.”

Mr. Rege denies his e-mail exchange with Headley was unethical. “By talking of political connections and the signing of the MoU, I was only trying to gauge his capacity to pay and undertake projects. To test how genuine this person is.”

Police sources in Mumbai told The Hindu they were unaware of any trust run by Mr. Rege, and that he was not being investigated for potential wrong-doing.