FBI team to visit India to probe Headley’s links

New Delhi: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sleuths would be arriving in India on November 18 to probe Indian links of David Headley - under detention in US for allegedly plotting terror attacks. Headley and his Pakistani co-conspirator Tahawwur Hussain Rana were arrested for the foiled terror plot to attack India and Denmark. The FBI believes that both were operatives of the banned Pak-based terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). The US sleuths, while in India, would probe Headley’s Indian network and also establish his links with the Le, reports said Thursday. Incidentally, a Chicago court has given 60 days deadline to FBI to complete its investigations in the case and file an indictment. FBI’s India visit comes when Indian govt has issued an advisory suggesting that five Indian cities - Delhi, Mumbai, Lucknow, Agra and Ahmedabad – are on the terror radar just before 26/11 anniversary. Incidentally, these are the very cities which were visited by Headley during his multiple trips to the country.
The US sleuths are also expected to visit all these cities. American investigators are also sure that he made multiple trips to Pakistan, where he spent "substantial time" undergoing training from terror groups. Moreover, the FBI has also already established that he was also conducting recruitment of cadres for Lashkar, to send them to a Gulf country using the services of his immigration business set up in Mumbai. It has sent alarm bells ringing in the Indian establishment as there have been mysterious disappearances of many accused from Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Hyderabad including that of Rahil Sheikh, an alleged mastermind in the 2006 Mumbai serial blasts that left 187 people dead. Indian sleuths snubbed Even as the FBI team gets ready to visit India, New Delhi certainly feels snubbed as its team of intelligence officials had to leave the US disappointed after a week-long stay as they where not allowed could not question David Headley. Sources familiar with the visit of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) officials termed "bureaucratic" and "procedural" hurdles as the main reason for them not being successful in interrogation of Headley, who is lodged in a Chicago jail. However, the Indian team is believed to have spent most of their time in Washington and they could not make their planned trip to Chicago – where Headley and his co-conspirator Tahawwur Hussain Rana are lodged in a jail – to interrogate the duo, both Chicago-residents. The team left for India through New York on November 8. In Washington, officials familiar with the investigations told reporters that the Indian officials had a series of meetings with their FBI counterparts during which the American intelligence officials shared their investigation and interrogation details with them.
However, the Indian team wanted to question Headley on different aspects of the terror plot. The officials were disappointed that they were not able to interrogate either of the two arrested, given that this was the prime objective of their trip, the sources said. Post 26/11 there has been close cooperation between the Indian and American intelligence agencies. Another source told reporters that the reluctance on the part of the FBI to let a foreign intelligence agency interrogate one of the terror suspects under its custody was because its own investigation had not been completed. The Indian team is expected to return to the US soon to question Headley, the sources said. Headley was arrested on October 18 along with Rana, a Canadian citizen of Pakistani origin, by FBI at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport before boarding a flight to Philadelphia, intending to travel to Pakistan.