"I discouraged Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) to not attack Siddhivinayak temple and Naval Air Station," said American Pakistani terrorist David Coleman Headley before a special court on Friday.
Continuing his deposition via video conferencing, Headley told Judge G.A. Sanap that he discouraged LeT to not attack the temple and the Air station because they were both heavily guarded.
He also told the court that Major Iqbal, serving in the Pakistani Army was upset and unhappy about the fact that the Mumbai Airport was not selected as one of the locations for attack in November 2008.
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Headley said he wanted to have access to Shiv Sena Bhavan as he thought the LeT would be interested in attacking the building or even assassinating the head. He said that LeT handler Sajjid Mir told him to maintain good relations with the head of public relation of Uddhav Thackeray for easy access to the building. He added that he visited the place 2/3 times and made videos of it from inside and outside and handed over the videos to either Mir or Major Iqbal, he couldnt recollect.
An al Qaeda operative in the 313 Brigade, Iliyaz Kashmiri gave Headley the money to visit India after the attacks in March 2009. Headley then went to the National Defence College (NDC) in Delhi and surveyed it. Kashmiri also told Headley to visit Chabad House in Pune, Pushkar and Goa and surveyed the places.
Major Pasha who joined the Al Qaeda after serving the Pakistani army provided him with the list of places to visit and told him that it was a good idea to attack NDC as it was a high value target and had senior military officers. He also said that if the attack was successful then "they would be able to kill more military officers than more brigadiers and major generals killed in wars with Pakistan in the past."
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