Headley's confession exposes Pak's 26/11 guilt
New Delhi: Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley, who has confessed scouting targets for the 2008 Mumbai terrorist strike, has told Indian investigators Pakistani militant leader Hafeez Saeed was the mastermind behind the attacks in which the ISI played an active and key role.
A team of National Investigation Agency (NIA) interrogators questioned Headley for 34 hours from June 3 to June 9 over the role he and Pakistanis played in carrying out the attacks on Mumbai.
Headley told NIA officials that Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militant group, planned, controlled and executed the Mumbai attacks. The ISI provided the background intelligence and financing. According to Headley, the conspirators’ original plan was to target a conference of software engineers at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai in March 2008. The plan was changed later and The Trident Hotel and the Jewish Chabad House were added to the list of targets.
Headley has identified voices of three LeT leaders who acted as handlers of the terrorists who attacked the Taj Hotel and Chabad House. He has said that Sajid Majeed coordinated the Chabad House attack and Abu Qahafa focused on the Taj. Qahafa's nephew was among the 10 terrorists killed in the Mumbai attack.
Headley has also said Lashkar commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi was a co-conspirator in the attack.
Headley used his mother-in-law's camera and a Sony Ericsson cellphone given to him by the ISI to shoot videos of targets in June 2008.
He has revealed that Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray chief was on Saeed's hit-list. Saeed, chief the banned Islamic charity group Jamaat-ud-Dawa, believes Thackeray has harmed Muslims and spoke about attacking him when the attacks on Mumbai were being planned.
Headley exposes Pakistan
Hedaley's confession demolishes Pakistan's argument that non-state actors were to blame for the attacks and none of its official institutions was involved.
Instead, he says the ISI was so involved in planning the attacks that it even cleared the weapons used by the Mumbai terrorists.
Headley has told the NIA that Pakistan Navy frogmen guided him at Lashkar camp in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. The ISI funded him for his surveillance of targets in Mumbai.
The Pakistani-American says ISI handles every important LeT member and Shuja Pasha, the Director General of the intelligence agency, visited Lakhvi in jail after the Mumbai attacks.
He claims the Laskhar was first planned to attack Mumbai via sea in September 2008 and the ISI had even acquired a Rs 25-lakh boat for it.
Headley has also said how Pakistani could be involved in the July 2006 attacks on Mumbai local trains. The train attacks were a part of the Karachi project headed by Abdurremhan Pasha. The perpetrators were Indians but Pakistan masterminded them, he has said.
Headley had plans beyond being a scout for the Mumbai terror attacks: he intended to settle down in India as a Lashkar agent.
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