Incarcerated lashkar-e-Tayyeba (leT) terrorist David Coleman Headley will appear before a city court for four days from March 22, for a cross-examination by Abdul Wahab Khan, the lawyer of key 26/11 conspirator Zaibuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal, in the 2008 Mumbai mayhem case.
Confirming this, the Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said here on Thursday that he had informed the sessions court here that Headley would be available for cross-examination in the 26/11 attacks case before the sessions court from March 22 to 25 through video-link from an undisclosed location in the United States. “The court has passed an order fixing the dates of Headley’s appearance before the court,” Nikam said.
Nikam also indicated that if needed, the Prosecution would re-examine Headley during the same period.
Sessions Judge GA Sanap had on February 22 directed the Prosecution to check with the US authorities about the availability of Headley for his cross-examination in the 26/11 attacks case. This had come after Jundal’s lawyer Abdul Wahab Khan told the court that he would like to cross—examine Headley for four days.
After confirming with the US authorities, Nikam conveyed to the court on Thursday that Headley would present himself before the sessions court between March 22 and 25 for cross-examination in the 26/11 case.
Headley’s impending cross-examination assumes considerable political significance in the light of a raging controversy over the alleged alterations made in the second affidavit before a court regarding Ishrat Jehan’s alleged links with leT.
Headley who is currently serving 35-year sentence in a terror case in a US jail following a plea bargain that saved him from death sentence and extradition – had deposed before Judge Sanap’s court from February 8 to 13, in the trial of Abu Jundal, two months after he was pardoned and made an approver in the case by the same court.
After a five-day deposition of Headley ended on February 13, the Judge had deferred the cross-examination of the leT operative, who is an accused-turned- approver in the 26/11 attacks case. During his deposition, Headley had among made following revelations: that had he had carried out reconnaissance of the 26/11 attack sites, that leT had planned two unsuccessful attacks on Mumbai prior to the 26/11 attacks, that the Siddhi Vinayak temple, naval base and a conference of Indian defence scientists to be held at the Hotel Taj were also targets and that Ishrat Jehan, who was killed in an encounter with the Gujarat police in 2004, was a member of leT.
Headley also told the court that the leT worked in tandem with Pakistan’s spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in engineering terror acts in India and that he worked for both leT and ISI, that leT operative Abu Aziz was one of the persons involved in the attack on the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru in December, 2005 and that he had surveyed four landing sites to zero in on the spot for landing of terrorists arriving from Pakistan.
Headley had also told the court that Al Qaeda had asked him to carry out reconnaissance of New Delhi-based National Defence College (NDC), while Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) had told him to look for and recruit employees at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai as moles to provide classified information.
Deposing before a special for the fifth day in the trial of key conspirator of 26/11 attacks case Zaibuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal, Headley identified the voices of his handler Sajid Mir and two other leT operatives Abu Khafa and Abu Al Kama, the trainers and coordinators of the 10-member fidayeen squad.
In some other revelations, Headley told the special court: that his main contacts in ISI and leT were Major Iqbal and Sajid Mir respectively, that the ISI provided “financial, military and moral” support to various terrorists operating from Pakistan, including leT and that various terror outfits had formed United Jehadi Council, whose main objective was to engineer terror attacks in India.
During the deposition of Headley, Nikam posed as many as 750 questions to the conspirator-turned-approver.