Thaindian News

Chicago, May 27 (IANS) Self-confessed Pakistani-American terrorist David Headley told a Chicago court Thursday that he helped identify a safe landing site for Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists arriving by sea for the Mumbai attacks.

During cross examination by lawyers defending his long time friend Pakistan-born Tahawwur Rana, Headley aka Daood Gilani, also testified that a Pakistani Navy man was present during discussions on the landing site with Maj Iqbal, his handler from Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence(ISI), who helped plan the attack.

Asked by Rana’s lawyer Charles Swift what was he looking for in identifying the landing site, Headley said: “Looking for something safe where we could not be detected.”

Asked if “when discussing the landing site, someone from the Pakistan Navy was present-clean shaved, military bearing hair cut,” Headley replied in the affirmative. He identified the Navy man as Abdur Rahman.

When visiting Pakistan he always briefed Iqbal at a Lahore safehouse, Headley said, but admitted he knew very little about the ISI man. He also did not know anybody higher than Iqbal in the spy agency.

“In the end though, you can’t prove that anybody higher than Major Iqbal?” asked Rana’s attorney Charles Swift. “That’s the only person you can give evidence on. You can’t even identify or find him.”

“Yes,” said Headley.

Iqbal, he said, had a unique cellphone with a US number with which the ISI man contacted him when he was in India.

Headley, who has said that he started working in 2000 with Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) which operated under the same umbrella as ISI, denied that he used Rana’s immigration services business as a cover to scout targets in Mumbai.

Asked if he ever used First World Immigration as a cover in all his surveillance, Headley plainly said: “No.”

Instead, he posed as tourist to shoot video and take pictures while going around the city during his trips to Mumbai, he said.

Rana’s lawyers also tried to show Thursday that their client was more concerned with business matters and was not in the loop on Headley’s plotting for the Mumbai carnage as alleged.

Swift showed emails detailing how Rana was concerned with keeping clients they had in Mumbai, had business interests in opening an office in Denmark and even travelled to India, close to the attacks, to decide what to do with the office.

They argued that if Rana was in on the plans, he wouldn’t have travelled to India at that time.