‘Headley’s plea bargain is a chance lost for India’

NEW DELHI - The government may maintain that David Coleman Headley’s plea bargain is not a setback, but security experts believe that Indian investigators have lost the chance to get information from the Pakistani American terror suspect who has confessed to his role in the Mumbai terror strike in a US court.

Clearly, we have lost the chance to get the information we wanted from him (Headley) as it is sure that his extradition is impossible now, said terrorism expert Ajay Sahni.

Headley’s plea bargain with prosecutors in a Chicago court means he will not be extradited to India, Denmark or Pakistan.

Sahni said the 49-year-old man may be bound by the terms of the deal to make himself available to and answer Indian investigators but “it doesn’t matter” in the larger sense.

Technically it is possible. But in the larger sense that doesn’t matter. It depends on the path of the trial he will be put through in the US. The question still arises, will we be able to get the information? Will we get access to him? There is no guarantee, Sahni, an author and globally cited expert on counter-terrorism, told IANS.

Home Minister P. Chidambaram has denied the plea bargain was a setback.

“Headley has agreed to fully and truthfully testify in any foreign judicial proceedings held in the US. We will continue to press for access to Headley in that he will testify in a court or subject himself to interrogation,” he told reporters.

Former Intelligence Bureau chief Ajit Doval agreed with Sahni and said it was difficult for Indians to get access to Headley.

“It seems that the US didn’t cooperate with India as much as India would have wanted to. Now (after the plea bargain), India has lost the opportunity to seek relevant information from Headley who is known to have played a crucial role in planning the Mumbai attack,” Doval told IANS.

“Questioning him through video conferencing, or interrogating him in the presence of his lawyer will have legal procedures to follow. It will be, apparently, too difficult now,” he said.

So does the plea bargain strengthen the common belief that he was an American agent who turned rogue and joined terrorists?

Sahni thinks so.

“I cannot say so but that looks like a credible information. Headley was under the US radar for quite sometime even when he visited India for plotting 26/11. The US authorities didn’t bother to inform us about his suspected moves,” said Sahni.

Headley, who pleaded guilty to a dozen federal terrorism charges in a Chicago court and admitted his role in planning the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, has also admitted that he attended training camps in Pakistan operated by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) on five separate occasions between 2002 and 2005.

The man from US President Barack Obama’s hometown, known as Daood Sayed Gilani, is said to be an Islamist at heart with a Christian name who also claimed to be a Jew.

Headley and his close associate Tahawur Hussain Rana, who is also in a US prison, were arrested last October in Chicago. They had both pleaded not guilty to charges of plotting attacks against India and Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper whose cartoons provoked outrage across the Muslim world.

Indian authorities had wanted an access but were denied the chance to quiz Headley, who had toured India extensively in the run up to the November 2008 Mumbai strike that left 166 Indians and foreigners dead in three days of naked terror.