Mumbai attack co-accused David Headley on Thursday told a U.S. court that a Pakistani Navy man was present during discussions with his Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) handler Major Iqbal on landing sites and arrival of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists by sea.
Headley also said he had attended over 50 training sessions with the powerful Pakistan's intelligence agency and that he always briefed Iqbal first during his visits to Paksitan. Iqbal was briefed at a Lahore safehouse, he said.
The 50-year-old Pakistani-American gave details of the Mumbai attack plot involving his Pakistani handlers while being cross-examined by the defence attorney Charles D. Swift on the fourth day of the trial of Tahawwur Rana, a Pakistani of Canadian origin and another co-accused in the case.
Headley said the ISI provided him a special discourse in Lahore for carrying out surveillance ahead of the Mumbai carnage, dissatisfied with the military and espionage training received by him from the LeT. “The ISI did provide me [espionage] training,” he said,
“When discussing the landing site, someone from the Pakistan Navy was present.” When the attorney asked his name, Headley said, Abdur Rahman was his name.
Headley told the court that when he met Major Iqbal in 2006, he expressed dissatisfaction over the military and espionage training that he had received from the LeT earlier.
Major Iqbal, who was identified by Headley as ‘Chaudhery Khan,' told him that the training received from the LeT was “not very good” and was “very elementary,” so he decided to give instructions to him.
Headley said he had taken videos of the Taj Hotel in Mumbai several times and also inside of a train station in CST.
He was asked video surveillance at railway station was an egress route (act of getting out of target area)
Yes
That was Major Iqbal planning?
Yes
You were not detected?
Yes
This is the landing site, you identified?
Yes
What were your looking for?
Looking for something safe where we could not be detected.
Headley said he went to the Taj Hotel to video the area on numerous times and that he had stayed in the hotel on April 7, 2007 along with his second wife (from Morocco) with me.
He testified he used the occasion to videotape and take pictures and that his second wife was covered in a veil.
Headley said Iqbal had a unique cell phone (with U.S. number) with which the Pakistani contacted him when he was in India.
