David Coleman Headley, the Pakistani-American now serving 35 years in a US prison for his role in plotting the Mumbai terror attacks, has come out with a draft memoir that describes what drew him to lashkar-e-Tayyeba (leT). It was simply the Pakistani terror outfit’s “dedication” to the “liberation of Kashmir”. Being a white male, an American citizen and a drug smuggler-turned-US Government informant, Headley, born Daood Gilani, had the perfect cover that appealed to leT when it first took him under its wings in 2000 and trained him for its dastardly Mumbai mission that killed 166 people, including six Americans.
“On one of my trips, October 2000, I made my first contact with lashkar-e-Taiba, quite by accident. I attended their annual convention in November. I was very impressed with their dedication to the cause of the liberation of Kashmir from Indian occupation,” writes Headley, according to PBS Frontline which was given exclusive access to the draft memoir as part of a new investigation along with ProPublica.
“Excerpts from the draft offer a unique window into Headley’s turn toward extremism, his training with lashkar-e-Taiba and his preparations for the Denmark attack (against the Jyllands-Posten newspaper that had published a caricature of Prophet Mohammad),” says PBS, which aired on Tuesday a new documentary, titled “American Terrorist”. Headley, who worked on leT’s Danish plot till his arrest by the FBI at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in October 2009, details his various training programmes after he joined the leT on “full time” in 2002.
“We hid most of the day in caves and under trees, while we were given instructions on various lessons. Most of the practical aspects of the lessons were carried out at night. During this course, I was trained in infiltration, survival, camouflage, raid/ambush tactics, hide out, hiding and retrieving weapons caches, more than a dozen night marches, target practice with AK-47 and 9 mm pistol, RPG, grenades, among other training. We also went through an extensive indoctrination process and were required to study many Quaranic Chapters and Hadith,” he writes.
In 2005, his lashkar handler Sajid Mir asked him to change his name from Daood Gilani to a Christian sounding name and get a new US passport. Once that was done, Mir told Headley that he would be going to India “since I looked nothing like a Pakistani in appearance and spoke fluent Hindi and Urdu it would give me a distinct advantage in India”. In 2007, Headley, marrying a second time, was conducting regular reconnaissance of targets in Mumbai. On one trip, he checked into the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel with his new wife for a “honeymoon”.
In his draft memoir on the Mumbai plot, Headley writes: “The plan was to capture an Indian fishing vessel, which constantly strayed into Pakistani waters, and commandeer it all the way to Mumbai. The hope was that the Indian Coast Guard would not notice an Indian vessel. The boys would carry a GPS device which would guide them directly to the landing site, I had selected earlier.”