David Headley said he visited Mumbai 7 times before the 2008 terror attack.
Highlights
- India may use David Headley's 26/11 revelations in new dossier: Sources
- India may confront Pakistan on its inaction against perpetrators: Sources
- Testifying via video, Headley revealed 26/11 planning, execution details
The information revealed by David Coleman Headley about the planning and execution of 26/11 may be assembled into a new dossier of evidence to be handed over to Pakistan, said sources in the Home Ministry today.
Headley testified for a court in Mumbai this morning via video from an undisclosed location in the US, where he was arrested in 2009 and sentenced to 35 years in jail. The Mumbai court investigating the 26/11 attacks gave him a conditional pardon in December and allowed him to turn witness.
Headley, a Pakistani-American, spoke at length of
how he joined the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2002 in Pakistan. He was recruited for a "leadership course" which was lectured, he said, by Hafiz Saeed, the chief of the Lashkar. Headley also described the role of Pakistan's ISI in collaborating with the Lashkar for the terror attack which left 166 people dead in Mumbai.
Headley's information, described as "sensitive" by public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, could be used, said Home Ministry sources, to again confront Pakistan about its inaction against those responsible for one of India's worst-ever terror attacks. Though Lashkar leader Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi and six others were arrested months after 26/11, their trial by a Pakistani court has made no progress.
Headley said he visited Mumbai 7 times before the 2008 attack and supplied his handlers in the Lashkar with videos and maps of the hotels and other landmarks that were then attacked by 10 terrorists who sailed in to Mumbai from Karachi and split into pairs in their siege of the city.