26/11 probe gets a new lease of life
It is an irony that the US has decided to extradite Canadian national Tahawwur Hussain Rana to India for his supporting role in the Mumbai terror attacks that killed 166 people in November 2008, but has refused to part with one of the primary perpetrators — Daood Gilani aka David Coleman Headley. Rana, a doctor who had deserted from the Pakistan Army, and Headley were old friends and classmates at the Hassan Abdal military academy near Islamabad. Both were tried on 12 counts by a US court and sentenced to 15 and 35 years in jail, respectively, in 2013.
Details of the Rana-Headley connection come to us from their indictment and trial in the US on terrorism charges. These were confirmed by the interrogation report of Headley by the National Investigation Agency in June 2010.
In September 2023, the Mumbai police filed a 400-page supplementary chargesheet that came up with a surprise revelation: Rana had visited Mumbai a week ahead of the attacks. The US court documents did not have this information, which suggest that he may have had a more sinister role to play in the attacks.
Rana came into the picture when Headley met him in Chicago in 2006 and told him about his Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) links and his decision to change his name to conceal his identity. He also told him about his association with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and his assignment to conduct surveillance in Mumbai. He asked Rana whether he could set up a branch of his First World Immigration office there, and Rana agreed.
After subsequent visits in 2007 and 2008, Headley kept Rana abreast of his activities there, including video surveillance of Taj Mahal hotel and surveying a possible landing site. He also briefed him on his conversations with Sajid Mir and Major Iqbal, two Pakistani ISI operatives. At least twice in his five visits to Mumbai, Headley received money from Rana at a bank close to the Oberoi hotel.
Count 12 of the US indictment noted that since 2005, the two had “knowingly provided” material support — personnel, currency, tangible property, and false documentation and identification — to the LeT.
Despite this, Rana was actually acquitted on the counts relating to the Mumbai attacks. His conviction was on count 11 connected to the subsequent plot, of which Headley was also a part, to target Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and on count 12 for providing material support to terrorists.
Rana’s defence counsel claimed that he was “easily the least culpable of all the members of the plot”. But there are many gaps in the American proceedings and this is what the Indian authorities hope to fill after they obtain Rana’s custody.
Headley was not extradited to India because of his plea agreement with the US, which barred a death sentence and extradition to either India or Denmark. The US authorities said they were provided significant information by him about the association and the involvement of the ISI in the attacks, about the personnel, structure, methods, abilities and plans of the LeT, that his testimony helped convict Rana and that he had also answered the questions of Indian authorities for seven days. In addition, Headley’s actions also enabled the authorities to file criminal charges against six others — Sajid Mir, Abu Qahafa, Mazhar Iqbal, Major Iqbal, Ilyas Kashmiri and Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed.
Rana did not enter a plea deal or fully cooperate with US authorities, and hence his extradition is taking place, albeit after a lengthy process. India did make efforts to extradite Headley. A request was sent to the US in December 2012 by the government, but despite this, America refused.
There is no easy closure on 26/11. Though Lashkar chief Hafiz Saeed is serving a 78-year sentence for terror financing and his deputy Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and Rana are serving a 15-year jail term for terrorism, the whereabouts of other perpetrators — Sajid Mir, Abu Qahafa, Mazhar Iqbal, Major Iqbal, Hashim Syed, Muzammil and Zarrar Shah — are not very clear.
Ilyas Kashmiri was killed in a US drone strike. After claiming that Sajid Mir, the main planner of the Mumbai attacks, was dead, the Pakistani authorities said they arrested him in July 2022 and have sentenced him to eight years in prison for terror financing. Details of this matter are murky because the US, which has indicted Mir, along with Headley, and which has a $5-million reward for him, would like to extradite him. Both Saeed and Mir were convicted of terror financing, not terrorist acts, in a successful bid to get Pakistan out of the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force.
Going by the US proceedings, which saw his acquittal on charges relating directly to the Mumbai attacks, Rana claimed a peripheral role in 26/11. But the account above is suggestive of a much deeper role. The visit to Mumbai days before the attacks, too, suggests this. The Indian authorities have not been satisfied by their investigations, especially of the role of locals who may have been involved in the conspiracy. There is reference to a “Bashir Sheikh”, who received Headley on behalf of Rana in Mumbai during his first visit there and was his contact during his subsequent visits as well. He has not been identified, leave alone arrested.
Intelligence agencies have followed other trails, which suggest that some more locals were part of the support framework of the Mumbai attackers. Rana’s extradition will help fill important gaps in the probe into a tragedy that traumatised the country. But sadly, a full reckoning for the Mumbai attacks is still some distance away.
