David Coleman Headley deposed before a Mumbai court for the second day today (File Photo)
Terrorist David Coleman Headley made big revelations on Day 2 of his deposition in a Mumbai court on how the deadly 26/11 terror attack that killed 166 people in 2008 was planned and executed and about how Pakistan's spy agency ISI collaborates with terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
David Headley's 10 big reveals today:
Headley told the court that he was for working for the ISI too and had met many people from the Pakistani Army. On Monday, Day 1 of his deposition, he had recounted how he joined the Lashkar e Taiba in 2002.
Headley said today that the ISI and the Lashkar work in close coordination with each other. "The ISI provides financial, military and moral support to the Lashkar," Headley told the court, strengthening India's allegations of support for terrorists from the Pakistani establishment.
Headley said the ISI provides such support not just to the Lashkar-e-Taiba, but also other terror groups like the Hizbul Mujahideen and the Jaish-e-Mohammad led by Masood Azhar, which is suspected to have attacked the Pathankot airbase in Punjab last month.
Headley said the Lashkar and other terrorist organisations work together under the umbrella United Jihad Council. "They only have one aim - to promote terror activities in India," prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam quoted Headley as telling the court.
Headley said about a year before the 26/11 attack, Lashkar operatives planned an attack on a meeting of Defence Scientists that was to be held at Mumbai's famous Taj Mahal hotel. "We made a mock of the Taj," Headley said.
He said he was tasked with reccing the hotel and had video-graphed the second floor of Taj Hotel while staying there with his wife Faiza, as a honeymooning couple. Headley said the plan fell through because of a lack of weapons.
Headley also said his Lashkar handler Sajid Mir had asked him to survey the famous Sidhivinayak temple in Mumbai as a possible terror target. The temple was not one of the places that 10 Pakistani terrorists attacked in pairs in November 2008
One of the places that the terrorists did strike - the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus or CST - was not surveyed, Headley said, as a terror target, but as an escape route for the terrorists, who sneaked into Mumbai by sea. Nine were killed by security personnel. One, Ajmal Kasab, who attacked the CST, was captured alive and was hanged in 2012.
Headley said in March 2008, "I did surveillance of multiple places like the Taj Hotel, Naval air station and the Maharashtra State Police Headquarters in south Mumbai. I also selected landing sites for the terrorists."
Headley said today that he had advised terror leaders Hafiz Saeed and Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi, the main plotters of 26/11, to legally challenge US ban on the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
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