Had plans to target city conclave of defence scientists at the Taj and attack Siddhivinayak temple and a Navy airbase; Headley was told to recruit spies in Indian Army , ISI Is Lashkar’s support system.
Mumbai : The infamous David Cole-man Headley is joining the dots and bringing out the incestuous relationship between the terror outfits and the ISI, something that the Indian Intelligence was grappling with all these years.
On Tuesday, Headley revealed what is possibly Pakistan’s worst kept secret: That the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Jaish-e-Mohammad and the Hizbul Mujahideen get “financial,” “military” and logistical support from the ISI.
At the same time, he made fresh disclosures about an aborted plan to target a city conclave of defence scientists at the Taj and attack the Siddhivinayak temple and a Navy airbase.
Deposing before a court for the second day via a video-link from the US, Headley also dropped names of ISI officials as if they were his batch mates in school – one of them, ISI official Brigadier Riyaz, he revealed, was the handler of Lashkar’s top commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the mastermind of the 26/11 attacks.
Nikam is upbeat on Headley revelations
Taking the lid off his clandestine activities, Headley told the Special Judge G A Sanap during his deposition that he was working for the Pakistani spy agency and had met many people from the Pakistan Army. He named three officials of the Pakistan army and ISI — Colonel Shah, Lt Colonel Hamza and Major Samir Ali — besides retired army officer Abdul Rehman Pasha who was working in tandem with the LeT and the Al-Qaeda. Headley said his assessment was that the ISI and the LeT had a close interface with each other. But he added in the same breath that his assessment was based on hearsay.
Headley, who had visited Mumbai seven times to scout for tar-gets, revealed that plans to target Mumbai were hatched a year before 26/11 and that LeT initially wanted to attack a conference of Indian defence scientists at Taj Mahal Hotel for which even a model of the hotel was prepared. But the plan was spiked owing to logistical constraints and after factoring in difficulties like sneaking in weapons and personnel and lack of details about the schedule of the meet. The American national of Pakistani origin also said he had conducted a survey of the famous Siddhivinayak Temple and a Navy air station. About the plan to strike the temple, Headley said, “Sajid Mir (his handler in LeT) had specifically asked me to make a video” of the shrine.
The orders for most of the terror strikes came from Lakhvi since he was Lash-kar’s “top commander”. One Major Iqbal of the ISI whom Headley met in Lahore in early 2006 asked him to gather military intelligence from India and also try to recruit someone from the Indian military. ‘‘I told Major Iqbal that I would do the needful,” Headley said. “Samir Ali also wanted me to do some intelligence work in India. I was in contact with Samir over phone,” he said. On his links with militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed’s founder Masood Azhar, Headley said, “I saw Maulana Masood Azhar just once in October 2003. He is the head of Jaish-e-Mohammed. In October 2003, there was a gathering of the LeT and he was a guest speaker there.”
