The Pakistani-American who spent months casing out Mumbai ahead of the 2008 attacks told a Chicago jury on Monday that the ISI supports the extremist group he worked with on the deadly siege. David Coleman Headley testified that the ISI provided financial, military and moral support to banned militant group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LT).
“I assumed these groups operated under the same umbrella – they coordinated with each other,” Headley told the jury as he described his militant path and the bloody 60-hour siege of India’s largest city that left 166 people dead. Headley described his relationship with an ISI handler identified as “Major Iqbal” who gave him $25,000 to help cover the cost of his surveillance work.
“I told him what kind of (terrorist) training I did and he mentioned he was part of Lashkar” Headley said. Headley testified that after he told Iqbal of a 2003 plot he was working on, Iqbal asked him “to do something that was more important, which was intelligence work for the ISI.”
Headley formally admitted to 12 terror charges in March 2010 after prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty or to allow him to be extradited to either India, Pakistan or Denmark to face related charges.
