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| 2 Men Arrested in Chicago May Have Links to Mumbai Attack |
| 2009-11-19 |
| Investigators here are retracing the steps of two men arrested in Chicago by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to see if they helped plan the attacks here that killed more than 160 people in November 2008. Officials in Mumbai said that the two suspects, David Coleman Headley, an American with links of Pakistan, and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, who was born in Pakistan but is a Canadian citizen, both visited Mumbai and several other Indian cities in before the attacks, and may have visited some of the sites that were attacked. "It seems like there is some connection" between the attacks and the two men's repeated visits to India, Ashok Chavan, the chief minister of Maharashtra State, said in an interview. "But the link has to be established." Mr. Headley and Mr. Rana were arrested last month in Chicago in connection with a suspected plot to attack the headquarters of the Danish newspaper that published controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in 2007. The complaint against Mr. Headley, unsealed last month, said that he was suspected to conspiring with Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group based in Pakistan that is believed to have carried out the Mumbai attack, to strike at targets outside the United States. A senior police official here said that Mr. Headley had stayed at the Taj Palace Hotel, one of the main targets of the Mumbai attack, in 2007. Indian news reports citing anonymous officials have said that Mr. Headley also visited other sites of the attacks -- a cafe popular with tourists, a luxury hotel and a Jewish community center. Some reports say that Mr. Headley, who changed his name from Daood Gillani, posed as a Jew to visit the Jewish center. But the senior police official said such reports were premature. "There is a whole lot of kite flying going on," the official said, using an Indian expression for speculation. India's home minister, P. Chidambaram, told reporters last week that the links were being explored but declined to elaborate. "He visited India many a times before 26/11," Mr. Chidambaram told reporters, referring to the date of the attacks. "We are investigating probable link between 26/11 and Headley." According to an F.B.I. affidavit, Mr. Headley traveled to Pakistan and consulted closely with members of Harakat ul-Jihad Islami, a terrorist group affiliated with Al Qaeda. According to the documents Mr. Headley reported to the operational leader of the group, Ilya Kashmiri, on a plot that he and other militants referred to as the "Mickey Mouse" project. Investigators here have long suspected that the attackers in Mumbai had help in planning and carrying out the attacks beyond the Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders based in Pakistan. Some of their targets, like the Jewish center, were not well known and hard to find. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 ION TOPIX > {Foxnews]AL-QAEDA MESSAGE SPREADING ON ENGLISH-LANGUAGE [Web-Net]SITES??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2009-11-19 23:31 |
| #2 Chicago (where I lived 10 years) - the city where only criminals carry guns. (Chicago "laws" prohibit firearms to all civilians). |
| Posted by: borgboy 2009-11-19 13:09 |
| #1 Wow, the 'Paper of Record' finally noticed! |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2009-11-19 09:02 |