David Headley and Tahawwur Rana have been indicted by a US grand jury for the terror attacks in Mumbai on November 26, 2008. The two men were arrested in Chicago on 3 October, 2009 and charges were filed against them on 7 December, 2009.
The indictment revels that Lashkar e-Taiba provided $28,000 to David Headley for his numerous reconnaissance trips to India. The Times of India reports, “Gilani/Headley’s LeT handlers also showed him a styrofoam mockup of the Taj Mahal hotel and provided him with a global positioning system device and taught him how to use it to record the locations of possible landing sites and potential targets in Mumbai, which Headley then used during his surveillance trips in April and July 2008, the charges state.”
The grand jury also indicted Ilyas Kashmiri, a leader of Harakat-ul Jihad Islami and Abdur Rehman, a retired major in the Pakistani military, for their role in planning attacks on a Danish newspaper that published controversial cartoons of Prophet Mohammad. Ilyas Kashmiri was also allegedly involved in the recent suicide attack in Afghanistan that killed seven CIA operatives.
In India, Ajmal Kasab, the only surviving terrorist currently on trail in a Mumbai court, continued to deny his involvement in the terror attacks. He claims to have no knowledge of the 26/11 attacks. In December 2009 Ajmal Kasab retracted his guilty confession and instead alleged that the Mumbai police had conspired to frame him. Kasab was arrested on the scene, and also in action on surveillance cameras at the CST station. At present the special court is in the process of recording Kasab’s final statement before a verdict is issued.
