OOTDnews: Terror Attack Scout Tells Jury of Plan to Toss Severed Heads

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Terror Attack Scout Tells Jury of Plan to Toss Severed Heads

(Bloomberg) -- David Coleman Headley, a key witness in the U.S. government's case against alleged planners of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, told a federal court jury he was "pleased" when he learned they'd been carried out.

He also told the panel of eight women and four men at the Chicago courthouse about a planned assault upon a Danish newspaper in which victims were to be shot and decapitated by attackers who would then heave the heads from office windows. That plot followed the publication in the newspaper of cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

"Shoot them first and then behead them," were the instructions Headley testified today he was told to relay to the would-be attackers during a meeting in Pakistan's rugged Waziristan region with a man the U.S. says has ties to al-Qaeda, the Muslim terrorist group formerly led by Osama bin Laden.

Headley's testimony came on the second day of the U.S. trial of Tahawwur Rana, a Chicago businessman accused of using his immigration business to provide cover for Headley as he scouted the Mumbai sites where more than 160 people, including six Americans, were killed over three days in November 2008.

Rana, 50, is also accused of providing Headley's pretext for a similar mission to Copenhagen where the never-executed assault on the Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten newspaper would have been carried out.

Material Support

A Pakistani native and Canadian citizen, Rana is charged with providing material support for the two plots and for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group believed to have been behind the raids on two Mumbai hotels, a café, a train station and a Jewish center.

He faces a possible life sentence if convicted. Defense attorney Charlie Swift in his opening statement yesterday told jurors his client had been duped by his friend, Headley.

The U.S. government in 2001 labeled Lashkar-e-Taiba, which agitates for the separation from India of the predominantly Muslim state of Jammu and Kashmir, a terrorist organization.

Headley was the first witness called by federal prosecutors in the trial. Last year he pleaded guilty to 12 criminal counts including conspiracy to commit murder and supporting terrorists, and is a cooperating government witness.

"I was pleased," Headley, 50, told Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Collins today when asked how he reacted to news the Mumbai attack had occurred.

On his reconnaissance missions, Headley said, he'd carried business cards claiming he was an consultant for Rana's business and had opened a branch office in Mumbai which he said he used as part of his cover.

Mumbai Assault

Headley began testifying yesterday, telling the court how he'd met with agents of the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba, as well as a man he said worked for that nation's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency. Headley also said he told Rana about their preparations for the Mumbai assault.

Today, the American-born Headley described preparations for the planned strike at Jyllands-Posten. In 2005, the paper published caricatures of Muhammad, including one depicting him with a bomb in his turban.

The cartoons touched off protests in Muslim communities worldwide.

"Discussion on this matter has been long overdue," Headley said Rana told him when apprised of the Danish plot. In e-mails shown to jurors today, Headley referred to the revenge attack as the "Mickey Mouse" project.

Newspaper Attack

Ilyas Kashmiri, one of eight men charged in connection with the Headley-Rana case, led the newspaper attack planning and allegedly told Headley it would be carried out by operatives living in the U.K.

Kashmiri commands Harakat-ul Jihad Islami, a Pakistan-based terrorist group with ties to al-Qaeda, according to the U.S. Another defendant, Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, is allegedly a retired Pakistani army officer, while a third -- identified only as "Major Iqbal" -- also reportedly helped plan the Mumbai assault. None of the three are in U.S. custody.

Nine of the 10 Mumbai attackers died in firefights with responding Indian authorities.

Headley and Collins today took turns reading from the transcript of a telephone conversation between one of Headley's Lashkar handlers and two of the attackers of the Chabad House, a Jewish hostel in Mumbai, on Nov. 27, 2008, regarding the disposition of two hostages there.

"Get rid of them now," handler Sajid Mir reportedly told the attackers. "Place the barrel on the backside of their heads and fire."

Mir is charged with 12 counts in the U.S. case, including the murder of U.S. nationals in India. He isn't in custody.

The trial may last into mid-June, U.S. District Judge Harry D. Leinenweber has said.

The case is U.S. v. Kashmiri, 09-cr-00830, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois (Chicago).

--Editors: Peter Blumberg, Steve Farr