USA/INDIA: FBI interrogation tapes reveal Pakistan intelligence link during Mumbai attack trial

Record ID: 723422

  • Title: USA/INDIA: FBI interrogation tapes reveal Pakistan intelligence link during Mumbai attack trial
  • Date: 8th June 2011
  • Summary: CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, UNITED STATES (MAY 24, 2011) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF COURTHOUSE PEOPLE WALKING BY COURTHOUSE CLOSE OF COURTHOUSE SIGN
  • Embargoed: 23rd June 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: India, Usa
  • City:
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVADZG2FIHW82TB0XFG1L501H304
  • Story Text: As arguments in the 2008 Mumbai attack trial concluded in a Chicago court on Monday (June 6), the prosecution presented videotaped segments of the FBI's October 18, 2009 interview with one of the accused.
    On the tapes, released for the first time, Pakistani-born Canadian businessman Tahawwur Rana talks about his co-conspirator David Headley's ties with certain officers of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as well as the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group.
    Rana is charged with providing support and his Chicago-based immigration business as a cover while Headley scouted targets in India for the LeT and an ISI officer.
    The video shows a disheveled Rana, sitting in a poorly lit room, speaking, sometimes haltingly, with off-camera FBI agents.
    Rana tells an FBI special agent that Headley remained in contact with the LeT for five to six years and was also provided with weapons by the ISI.
    "I think he (Headley) said ISI gives them the weapons," Rana tells the agent. "When he says, when they about to enter...into India...so at that very moment, when they say bye-bye to each other...ISI at that time gives them, uh, you know, guns."
    The FBI agent asked Rana in the 2009 interview to focus on what Headley was doing with the ISI -- an element in the trial being closely watched by Pakistan's nemesis India. Rana described Headley acted as "kind of a link" between the ISI and the LeT, though the latter didn't probably didn't know about Headley's ISI connections.
    The defense has argued Rana was unaware of the attack plots and that Headley, an American who is a former U.S. drug informer and has a Pakistani father, was lying to justify his plea deal.
    Headley, 50, testified for parts of five days as part of a plea deal that allowed him to avoid the death penalty.
    The extent of Pakistani government involvement in the Mumbai attack is also important to U.S.-Pakistan ties strained by last month's U.S. killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2011. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register