India Seeks David Headley’s Extradition for Questioning in Mumbai Terror Attacks
India seeks extradition of David Headley, a US national accused of helping plan the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
Indian Defense Minister P. Chidambaram has welcomed the guilty plea filed by Headley, who has pleaded guilty on 12 counts in a court in Chicago.
Besides plotting Mumbai attacks, Headley has also been accused of plotting attack on a Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten that had published a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad. Earlier, 49-year-old Headley had denied the charges, but, later, changed his mind so that he could avoid the death penalty or extradition to India, Pakistan, or Denmark.
Headley had made five trips to India to reconnaissance various target points and took pictures of the same, including the hotels attacked in 2008 in Mumbai.
Talking to reporters, P. Chidambaram said in Delhi, "We will continue to press our request for access to interrogate him [Headley]. There are many more questions that we want to ask, much more information that we wish to get."
Lauding the United States for sharing significant information with his country, Mr Chidambaram said that the information was helping Indian investigation into the Mumbai attacks. He added that he had seen a copy of Hadley’s plea agreement and that the latter could face life imprisonment. India has been demanding severe punishment for Headley, and if he gets a life imprisonment, it would satisfy India. However, the United States has not given an opportunity to India to investigate Headley.
As per court documents, Headley, who is a Pakistani-American, had passed on the information collected from his trips to India and Denmark to his contacts within the terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has been accused of having organized the Mumbai attacks. According to prosecutors, he had been working with this terrorist group since 2002. FBI agents caught him in Chicago in October while he was trying to board a Philadelphia plane.
Prosecutors said that earlier he was known as Daood Gilani and had changed his name in 2006 on the directions of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which asked him travel to India to perform surveillance duties for the outfit.
Headley is the son of a Pakistani diplomat father and American mother.
