India had warned of a possible new attack in recent weeks and put its airports on alert for a possible hijacking attempt.
High alert across India
Mumbai and other parts of Maharashtra state were put on high alert after the explosion, said Chhagan Bhujbal, the state deputy chief minister.
Pillai noted during the news conference that the ashram had been visited by David Headley*, an American facing charges in Chicago aiding the Mumbai attackers.
IBN-CNN, quoting Indian intelligence officials, said Headley visited the Osho Ashram twice in 2008-2009. Officials initially believed he wanted to target foreigners visiting the ashram although they later concluded he was scouting the nearby Chabad House, a Jewish prayer center.
The intelligence officials, cited by IBN, also said that main suspects in the blast was the Indian Mujahiddin.
msnbc.com news services
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__^ a b Headley's ex-wife told reporters, "when he would go to Pakistan he would get all riled up again" and use words like "infidels" and "when he would see an Indian person in the street, he used to spit, spit in the street".Joseph Tanfani, John Shiffman, and Kathleen Brady Shea (2009-12-
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*David Coleman Headley, formerly known as Daood Sayed Gilani, (born June 30, 1960) is a Pakistani-American businessman based in Chicago, accused of involvement with terrorism.[1][2] He changed his Muslim name to a Judaeo-Christian name to hide his Muslim identity [3]
Gilani was born in Washington, D. C., where his father, Sayed Salim Gilani, worked for the Voice of America, and his mother, Serrill Headley, was a secretary. Danyal Gilani, spokesman for the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Yousaf Raza Gillani, is Headley's half brother.[4] When his parents broke up their marriage, Sayed Gilani went back to Pakistan, taking Daood and his sister with him. There Daood attended the Cadet College Hasan Abdal, a preparatory boys' high school for the military. In 1977 his mother traveled to Pakistan and brought him to live with her in the United States, where he grew up.[5] Serril Headley owned Khyber Pass, a pub in Philadelphia, and died in 2008.[6] In 1985 he married a Pennsylvania State University student, but they divorced in 1987 due to cultural conflicts.[7]
Gilani ran a video store in Philadelphia. In 1998 he was convicted of conspiring to smuggle heroin into the country from Pakistan.[8] After his arrest, he provided much information about his Pakistani drug contacts and got less than two years in jail. He later went to Pakistan to conduct undercover surveillance operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration.[5] In 2002 and three times in 2003, he attended Lashkar-e-Taiba training camps in Pakistan.[7]
In 2006, he changed his name to David Headley so as to make border crossings between the United States and other countries easier. He moved his family to Chicago, where he claimed to work for Rana's immigration agency. Rana had been in the Cadet College Hasan Abdal with him.[5]
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In relation to the 2010 Pune blast at the German bakery that killed eight or nine people and injured at least 33 people, Indian Home Secretary, G. K. Pillai[32] and the Hindustan Times[33] referred to Headley. The Hindustan Times stated that Headley had visited Pune in July 2008 and March 2009 and referred to him as a Lashkar-e-Taiba member.[33]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Headley
Pakistani American posed as Jew to case Mumbai Chabad
November 15, 2009
(JTA) -- A U.S. citizen of Pakistan origin allegedly posed as a Jew in order to enter the Mumbai Chabad center and prepare for last year's attack.
David Coleman Headley, 49, was arrested last month in Chicago as he tried to make his way to Pakistan via Philadelphia.
U.S. and Indian authorities have been investigating Headley. Over the weekend, the Indian Nation Investigating Agency raided several places in Mumbai in search of evidence.
Indian security sources believe Headley cased the Chabad center, known as the Nariman House, for the Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is believed to be responsible for the attacks.
Indian investigators found that Headley visited all 10 Mumbai locations that were attacked last November, according to the Chinese news agency Xinhua.
The news agency reported that Headley visited the Mumbai Chabad in July 2008. When he was arrested last month in the United States, he had a book in his possession titled "To Pray as a Jew," the Calcutta Telegraph reported.
Chabad Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah, were among the six victims killed at the Nariman House. A total of 179 people were killed in the Mumbai terror attacks, which occurred over a three-day period.
http://jta.org/news/article/2009/11/15/1009195/us-pakistani-posed-as-jew-to-case-mumbai-chabad
Headley Working for U.S. Agency (-cies)?
http://themoderatevoice.com/56118/terrorist-david-headley-an-american-spy/
Why is the USA not allowing India to interrogate American national David Headley, the Mumbai 26/11 terror attack suspect of Pakistani origin. Is it because Headley is also an American spy? This has become a hot news topic in the Indian media. Headley, and accomplice Tahawwur Hussain Rana, was arrested by FBI in October for conspiring to bomb public places in India.
David Headley was born in Washington, D. C., where his father, Sayed Salim Gilani, worked for the Voice of America, and his mother, Serrill Headley, was a secretary. Danyal Gilani, spokesman for the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Yousaf Raza Gillani, is Headley’s half brother. (See here…)
Top Indian official sources said that there is a strong suspicion that US agency CIA knew about David Headley’s (real name Daood Gilani) link with the Kashmiri separatist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) one year before Mumbai attack but did not convey it (to Indian officials) when he was freely travelling across India, reports The Times of India.
Mysteriously, the visa papers of Headley and Rana have gone missing from the Indian Consulate in Chicago. More here…
Such allegations would give credence to the suspicions in the Indian subcontinent that the US intelligence networks themselves are responsible for encouraging terrorist networks to destabilize those governments in the region who are not subservient to the American interests/orders. For long Kashmir has been cited as one important case where geo-political (not just religious) reasons prompt terrorism from afar.
In the murky world of Washington power-politics, and the CIA at Langley, American policy-makers had been using many notorious people, including Lee Harvey Oswald and Saddam Hussein, as “double agents”. Let us also not forget America’s current most hunted man, Osama bin-Laden, who was earlier their favourite fighter against the former Soviet Union’s empire building ambitions in Afghanistan.
The Times of India continues: “The investigators believe that the US agencies kept away the information from India and never allowed the Pakistani- origin Headley to get ‘exposed’.
“Headley, the 49-year old terror suspect, arrested by FBI for his role in Mumbai attacks, had visited India in March 2009 — four months after (an earlier) Mumbai attack carried out by LeT — but FBI still did not inform India that Headley is a LeT operative, apparently fearing he could be arrested in India.
“The sources said that they apprehended that if Headley got less punishment in court then India would have a reasonable ground to believe that Headley was a US agent and also working for LeT.
“It could also add credence to the belief that there was a plea bargain between Headley and US agencies.
“During his multiple visits to India, Headley had spent a lot of money running into lakhs of rupees through credit cards issued by American banks and in fake Indian currency, believed to have been brought from Pakistan.
“Indian investigators were now trying to find out who had paid his credit card bills in the American banks.”
More here…
The Washington-born son of a former Pakistani diplomat and American mother, Headley reportedly made a number of trips to India over the past few years visiting many places including Mumbai and befriending Bollywood stars, writes The Hindustan Times.“The Times suggested that Headley could have been a member of the US Drug Enforcement Agency which allowed him to make frequent trips to Pakistan and gain access to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group.
“Headley was arrested for heroin smuggling in 1998 in New York, according to reports, which was when he is alleged to have been recruited by the DEA.“India blames the LeT for planning and executing the Mumbai siege in November 2008 when 10 gunmen targeted multiple locations in the commercial capital, killing 166 people including six Americans…”More here…
Another report says that Headley posed as a Jew..Why should he pose as a Jew?….More here…
To burnish his fake Jewish credentials, Mr Headley even carried a book called How to Pray like a Jew, the FBI says. The FBI appears to have placed him under surveillance after noticing his frequent movements between India, Pakistan, the Gulf and Europe. (See here…)
Some in India are asking whether the US troops would have invaded India if an Indian national was suspected in a conspiracy to bomb places in America, and whose interrogation was to be refused by India. What is the Indian government going to do now?
Will the Indian Prime Minister be forced to bite the American president’s hand that he lovingly held in the White House recently (in the presence of the gate-crashers!!!)?
http://themoderatevoice.com/56118/terrorist-david-headley-an-american-spy/
Headley aka Gilani
MUMBAI SUSPECT DAVID HEADLEY INTRODUCED HIMSELF AS A CIA AGENT
According to the New York Times, Headley went to Pakistan to conduct undercover surveillance operations for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). (An Accused Plotter With Feet in East and West / Is Headley an American agent ? )David Coleman Headley 'was probably used by US intelligence to infiltrate Lashar-E-Toiba'. (Headley: Undercover agent?)
"The tantalising possibility that David Coleman Headley may have been a US undercover agent ... is vexing many here as American authorities keep the US-based Lashkar jihadi out of the reach of Indian investigators." (Is Headley an American agent? )According to The Times of India, Headley, while in India, 'frequently introduced himself as a CIA agent'. (Is Headley an American agent? )
More at http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2009/11/mumbai-suspect-david-headley-introduced.html
from The Pakistani Spectator
Public debate has focused on claims that Headley—who served as a Drug Enforcement Administration informant after being arrested with two kg of heroin in 1988—may have been planted by U.S. covert services inside Lashkar after his release in 2002.
“If this David Headley was working for the CIA all along, which is a very plausible conclusion,” says writer and journalist Webster Tarpley, “It means that the CIA implicated and was running and masterminding the Mumbai terror attack of 2008.”
David Headley of Chicago – aka Daood Gilani – was formally charged with involvement in planning last year’s terrorist attacks on 26/11/08 in Mumbai, India, says the US Justice Department.
Headley, who changed his name from Daood Gilani in 2006 and resides primarily in Chicago, was arrested on Oct. 3, 2009, by the Chicago FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) at O’Hare International Airport before boarding a flight to Philadelphia, intending to travel on to Pakistan.
Also, Tahawwur Hussain Rana – aka Tahawar Rana - a native of Pakistan and citizen of Canada who also resides in Chicago, was arrested on Oct. 18, 2009, at his home by federal agents. Rana is the owner of several businesses, including First World Immigration Services, which has offices in Chicago, New York and Toronto. He was charged with conspiracy to provide support to a foreign terrorism conspiracy that involved Headley and other individuals in Pakistan.
On Dec. 7, United States Attorney’s office unsealed additional charges, reading in parts:“New federal charges filed today allege that a Chicago man, who was arrested in October for planning terrorist attacks against a Danish newspaper and two of its employees, also conducted extensive surveillance of targets in Mumbai for more than two years preceding the November 2008 terrorist attack on India’s largest city that killed approximately 170 people, including six Americans, and injured hundreds more. The defendant, David Coleman Headley, a U.S. citizen, earlier this decade allegedly attended terrorism training camps in Pakistan maintained by Lashkar e Tayyiba (Lashkar), and conspired with its members and others in planning and executing the attacks in both Denmark and India…..”
More at David Headley: Terrorist or CIA agent? May be both?
Mumbai terror suspect David Headley was ‘rogue US secret agent’
Times London
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6960182.ece
Read the whole story: Times London
Rhys Blakely in Mumbai
11 Comments
A key terror suspect who allegedly helped to plan last year’s attacks in Mumbai and plotted to strike Europe was an American secret agent who went rogue, Indian officials believe.
David Headley, 49, who was born in Washington to a Pakistan diplomat father and an American mother, was arrested in Chicago in October. He is accused of reconnoitring targets in India and Europe for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Pakistan-based terror group behind the Mumbai attacks and of having links to al-Qaeda. He has denied the charges.
He came to the attention of the US security services in 1997 when he was arrested in New York for heroin smuggling. He earned a reduced sentence by working for the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) infiltrating Pakistan-linked narcotics gangs.
Indian investigators, who have been denied access to Mr Headley, suspect that he remained on the payroll of the US security services — possibly working for the Central Intelligence Agency
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“India is looking into whether Headley worked as a double agent,” an Indian Home Ministry official said yesterday.
Mr Headley, who changed his name from Daood Gilani, was in Mumbai until two weeks before the attacks on the city, which claimed 166 lives last November. It is alleged that he spent months checking targets in India’s commercial capital, using his Western looks and anglicised name to move in elite social circles, hobnob with Bollywood actors and even to pass himself off as Jewish.
Despite being firmly on the radar of the US intelligence agencies, he was allowed to return to India as recently as March. Indian officials are furious that their American counterparts did not share details of that visit at the time. The Indian media has raised the possibility that Mr Headley was being protected by his American handlers — a theory that experts say is credible.
“The feeling in India is that the US has not been transparent,” said B. Raman, a former counter-terrorism chief in the Indian foreign intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing.
“That Headley was an agent for the DEA is known. Whether he was being used by the CIA as well is a matter of speculation, but it is almost certain that the CIA was aware of him and his movements across the subcontinent.”
According to Mr Raman, it is probable that Mr Headley, who was arrested when the US authorities learned that he was about to fly to Pakistan, was listed on the main database of the
US National Counterterrorism Centre, a facility used by the CIA and several other American agencies to track terror suspects.
Indian officials suspect that US agencies declined to share intelligence to avoid compromising other secret operations and to to be able to deny any link with Mr Headley.
Analysts believe that the US may also have been anxious to avoid sharing information that could further raise tensions between India and Pakistan, nuclear-armed neighbours who have fought three wars.
According to documents put before a court in Chicago, Mr Headley had links with the Pakistan Army and, through it, with al-Qaeda.
As well as helping to co-ordinate the Mumbai atrocity, Mr Headley is accused of planning attacks on Mumbai’s Bollywood film industry, the Shiv Sena, a Hindu extremist group also based in Mumbai, a major Hindu temple, and a Danish newspaper that had published cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
The US authorities allege that he was close to Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a former Pakistani schoolmate and businessman who is also being charged with planning to attack the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten. Mr Rana is accused of having known about the attack on Mumbai in advance.
The CIA denied that Headley had worked for the organisation.
“Any suggestion that Headley was working for the CIA is complete and utter nonsense. It’s flat-out false,” Paul Gimigliano, from the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs, said.
The Indian Home Secretary, Gopal Krishna Pillai, has said that his Government would seek the extradition of Mr Headley — a request that has so far been stonewalled by US officials.
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