New Delhi: The pledge of joint efforts against “terror attacks from across the Pakistan border” and the announcement of extradition of terrorists during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington deserves greater attention. US President Donald Trump announced in the joint press conference that Tahawwur Rana, the mastermind of the 26 November 2008 Mumbai attacks, will be extradited to India. Rana, who is linked to the terrorist attack, will have to face justice in India. India has been demanding Rana’s extradition for many years. Once the US court had even given permission to extradite Tahawwur Rana to India. But in November last year, he filed a review petition on this. This petition was also rejected by the US Supreme Court last month. The attack was hatched by Pakistan’s terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. India has been demanding the extradition of the chief of this organization, Hafiz Saeed, from Pakistan. With the return of Rana and Anmol Bishnoi (Lawrence Gang) and other accused from America, pressure on Canada and Pakistan may increase.
Legal action against terrorist conspirator Rana in India and interrogation can expose those who supported terrorist activities not only from Pakistan but also from other countries through contacts and funding. Rana and his partner Headley had arranged terrorist activities with the help of pseudonyms and companies. In the investigation against Pakistani-American citizen David Coleman Headley by Indian agencies, one name was coming up repeatedly, and that name was Tahawwur Hussain Rana. During the four-week trial in Chicago, many information about Rana came to light. The most important thing about this trial was that Headley became a government witness against Tahawwur Rana.
Tahawwur Hussain Rana was born and brought up in Pakistan. After obtaining a medical degree, he joined the medical corps of the Pakistani army. Rana’s wife was also a doctor. In 1997, both husband and wife moved to Canada and became Canadian citizens in 2001. A few years before his arrest in 2009, Rana opened an immigration and travel agency in Chicago, USA. In Chicago, his old friendship with David Coleman Headley was resumed. When Headley started preparing for the Mumbai attack, he came to Mumbai several times between 2006 and 2008. To avoid suspicion on his frequent visits to India, Headley opened a branch of Rana’s travel agency in Mumbai. This time in the US talks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also stressed on strict monitoring and action against people and travel agencies who help in illegal infiltration. Rana was doing all this at the behest of Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. Six American citizens were also killed in the Mumbai attack. Rana was convicted on 12 charges, including helping in killing American citizens. The US investigative agency FBI arrested Rana and Headley at Chicago airport in October 2009. According to the FBI, these two were going to carry out a terrorist attack in Denmark. They had planned to attack the office of Jyllands-Posten newspaper. This newspaper had published controversial cartoons. During the interrogation after this arrest, the involvement of these two in the Mumbai attacks was also confirmed. Rana was thus sentenced to 14 years in prison for his involvement in two separate conspiracies. In his post-arrest statement in October 2009, Rana admitted that Headley had attended LeT training camps in Pakistan. During his trial in Chicago, the US Attorney General said that in the early summer of 2006, Headley and two LeT operatives discussed setting up an immigration office in Mumbai as a cover for their activities. Headley discussed with Rana the idea of setting up an office of First World Immigration Services in Mumbai so that they could use the office as a cover for their own activities.
During his testimony, Headley said, “In July 2006, I went to Chicago to meet Rana and told him about the mission (attack on Mumbai) that Lashkar had assigned to me. Rana approved my plan to set up a “First World Immigration Services” center in Mumbai and helped me obtain a five-year business visa.” After Rana was sentenced, US Assistant Attorney General for National Security Lisa Monaco said after the court’s decision, “Today’s decision reflects that just as we pursue terrorists and their organizations, we will also pursue those who carry out their violent plots from a safe distance.
In Mumbai, he lived as David Headley, but to his sister Sherry, step brothers Hamza and Daniyal, wives Portia, Shazia and Faiza, and best friend Tahawwur Rana, he was a Pakistani-American whose real name was Dawood Salim Jilani. David Coleman Headley is currently imprisoned in a US jail for 35 years. Dawood, or rather David’s father Syed Salim Jilani, was a Pakistani broadcaster. He went to Washington for a few years to work for Voice of America. Later, David Headley started visiting Pakistan again. Meanwhile, he came in contact with drug smugglers and got involved in heroin smuggling. Four years later, custom officials caught him at Frankfurt airport with 2 kg of heroin. German authorities handed him over to the US. There he struck a deal with the Americans under which he would work as an informant for them, infiltrating the Pak-American heroin network and passing on their secret information to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). With the help of his father, who had by then become the Director General of Radio Pakistan, he bought a house near the Lahore Canal. In late 2000, when al-Qaeda attacked the American ship USS Cole in Yemen, Dawood donated Rs 50,000 to the Lashkar Jihad Fund and went to listen to a speech by Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed. For the next two and a half years, Dawood was fully in touch with Lashkar and was undergoing training at the Lashkar camp in Muridke, 15 km from Lahore. Famous Danish journalist Kare Sorensen writes in his book “The Mind of a Terrorist The Strange Case of David Headley”: “Dawood’s dream was to be sent to fight in Kashmir, but Lashkar’s Leader Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi felt that Dawood was too old for this operation. He asked Lashkar commander Sajid Mir to include Headley in the big plan to attack India. Lashkar needed a person who could travel to Mumbai for long periods of time with a camera and notebook and who did not mind mingling with people. In June 2006, Dawood was officially included in this operation. He was asked to disguise himself as an American tourist who would visit Mumbai for a trip and collect all the information there. For this, Dawood first went to America where he gave up the name Dawood and adopted a new name, David Coleman Headley. He got a new passport made with this new name. After this, Headley was given an advanced training for this role. Four months after the Mumbai attacks, in March 2009, Headley once again visited Mumbai. This time he stayed at the Hotel Outram in Churchgate, where he had stayed once before. On October 3, 2009, Headley was arrested as he was boarding a flight at the Philadelphia Airport from Chicago to Pakistan.
The extradition treaty between India and the US provides that if a person commits a crime in India and is caught on US soil, India can demand his extradition but Headley probably struck a deal with the US that he would cooperate fully with them provided he was not extradited to India or Pakistan and the US agreed to it. After his arrest, it took a long time for Indian authorities to get permission to question Headley and even then they were allowed to ask limited questions. Testifying before a Mumbai court, Pakistani terrorist David Coleman Headley said that Lashkar-e-Tayyaba had planned to attack Indian defence scientists at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai and Pakistan’s ISI had asked him to recruit Indian military personnel to spy for them. He also said that the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba group is fully responsible for the terrorist attacks in India. All orders came from its top commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi. David Coleman Headley has been imprisoned in a US jail for 35 years. Rana is in a jail in Los Angeles and preparations are being made to keep him in Tihar jail in India.