Seeking to provide a new dimension to the ongoing trial of his client and key 26/11 conspirator Zaibuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal, his lawyer Abdul Wahab Khan on Wednesday moved an application before a Sessions Court to make incarcerated leT terrorist David Coleman Headley’s wife Shazia and his friend Tahawwur Hussain Rana co-accused in the case.
Ahead of the cross-examination of Headley – slated to begin on March 22, Jundal’s lawyer Abdul Khan filed an application before the court of Sessions Judge GA Sanap seeking to make Headley’s wife Shazia and Rana co-accused in the ongoing trial.
Talking to mediapersons here, Abdul Khan said: “We have moved an application seeking to make both Shazia and Rana co-accused. This is because Headley, in his deposition, had said that both knew about the Mumbai attacks before November 26, 2008. Headley also said he even got congratulatory message from Shazia (after the attack)”.
Judge Sanap is expected to hear Abdul Khan’s application on Thursday.
Headley — who is currently serving a 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 Jundal, two months after he was pardoned and made an approver in the case by the same court.
Judge Sanap had on March 10 passed an order permitting Abdul Khan to cross-examine Headley — who is an accused-turned-approver in the 26/11 attacks case — for four days from March 22, through video-link from an undisclosed location in the United States.
During his five-day-long deposition that ended on February 13, Headley had among made following revelations: that hed 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 had posed as many as 750 questions to the conspirator-turned-approver.