With these kinds of thoughts swirling around in my mind, I tried to find out more about the sort of people terrorists are. I started reading books and referring to old literature about terrorism. And I found that Headley shared quite a few similarities with two other terrorists, both perpetrators of the 9/11 attack—Ramzi Yusuf and Mohammad Atta.
Yusuf and Headley appeared to be very similar: like Headley, Yusuf was a charmer, his parents were of mixed origin, and he too turned out to be a mercenary. He liked to charm his way into people’s lives and take whatever he wanted. Like Headley, he was very meticulous, very determined and highly intelligent.
Atta, though, was an angry man, and maybe deep inside, so was Headley. Atta, like Headley, had a deep-rooted angst against his father and had a complicated relationship with both his parents.
This was when it dawned on me that I had issues similar to these two. I too have problems with my father, and my parents are from different religious backgrounds and, in fact, different worlds. I am the product of a mixed marriage. It is quite likely that if Headley had not been arrested when he was, I would have become one of them. Maybe I would have become a Yusuf or an Atta or a David Headley junior. I don’t know what fate would have had in store for me if that had happened, but I was saved somehow.
I began tracking Headley and his journey on the Internet, through news articles and the documents related to his trial. I wanted to find out how a man like him, a brilliant actor and a covert operative, was finally arrested. How did a man who was such an expert at deceiving all and sundry, manage to fall into the net of the US agencies?
As I browsed online, I came across a story in the International Herald Tribune. It said that the Americans had been able to track Headley using the oldest trick of all: they planted a bug on him.
Clearly, Headley had no idea that at some point, the FBI had become suspicious of him and his movements to and from India, Pakistan and Denmark. They decided to keep tabs on him, and planted a concealed microphone in his car. And by doing so, they stumbled onto his devious plans, what he had done and what he was planning to do.
On a long car ride in September, the two Chicago men, Tahawwur Rana and David Headley, spoke openly about the terror attacks in Mumbai and about their future plans in Copenhagen. It was a month before Headley was arrested, and in that crucial conversation, everything came out. I could not get my hands on the full transcript, but the newspaper reported that Rana had been quoted as saying that if there had been one medal in the world for command, top class, ‘Daood, you would’ve got it.’
It was an insignificant comment, but that’s how the FBI realized that Rana was actually complimenting Headley for all his achievements and accomplishments in India and future ones in Denmark.
The entire story in IHT was about how the bug was first placed because the FBI needed evidence, any kind of proof, against the perpetrators, something they hadn’t been able to get their hands on yet. The microphone they placed in the car recorded a huge chunk of conversation and provided the Americans with exactly what they were looking for. All the missing pieces of the puzzle fell into place. During the conversation, Headley and Rana discussed a meeting they’d had in Dubai. At the meeting, Headley recalled, Rana had been told by Pasha that more attacks were about to be carried out. Everything was in motion and going smoothly, he said, and things had started heating up soon after he had left.
‘Where and how did all this start, Daood?’ Rana asked Headley.
‘In Mumbai, yeah,’ Headley replied.
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah!’
The FBI had got the evidence it needed. They knew now that Headley’s nefarious plans had been launched in Mumbai and that he intended to carry out in Copenhagen a sequel to those attacks. They realized that Headley was fully prepared, and that something big was going to happen very soon.
Soon after this, the Americans apparently decided that they could not wait any longer. For them, Indian blood might be cheap and dispensable, but the white blood of the Europeans was very dear and sacred. They decided that before Headley could orchestrate any more devastation, they had to pre-empt him, they had to bring him in.
So, on 3 October 2009, as he prepared to leave Chicago for Philadelphia, from where he would fly to Pakistan, and from there to Copenhagen to carry out the attacks, Headley was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, even before he could board the flight. A total of thirteen video recordings of surveillance that he had carried out in and around the Jyllands-Posten newspaper office in Denmark were found on him—damning evidence indeed.
In fact, he would have been caught much earlier had the authorities, both Indian and American, been a little more alert.
Headley had commented, I found out later from some cops with whom I had developed a rapport, that Indians were chutiyas, especially the babus and diplomats. Apparently Tahawwur Rana had made a huge error in his visa application to the Indian embassy for his first-ever visit to India. David felt that if Indian officials had been just a bit smarter, they would have smelt a rat right at the beginning and his first visit and subsequent mission would have been aborted even before it had started. He also claimed that Indian officials were just not as thorough as they should have been and didn’t go through the application as carefully as they should have. If they had done so, they would have noticed the huge discrepancy.
I couldn’t help but agree with him. Headley was an American and he held an American passport, and so the mistake was never noticed. A white American man is never questioned. He is never wrong.
Moreover, Headley has himself admitted that he had made three mistakes while he was in India, but being the brilliant actor and chameleon that he is, he managed to extricate himself from each tricky situation. Once, he had made the mistake of speaking in Hindi. He was in a taxi and stuck in traffic and had inadvertently cursed in Hindi. He told his interrogators that the taxi driver was astonished at the white man speaking unaccented Hindi, but he managed to cover it up by immediately putting on a heavy accent and claiming that he had picked up the language locally.
Headley also admitted that once, at Outram Hotel, he had left the door of his room ajar and the owner, Mrs Kripalani, had chanced upon him offering namaz. He got away by telling her that he was doing yoga.
Finally, Headley also made the mistake of bringing his burkha-clad Moroccan wife Faiza Outalha with him to Mumbai. It would have been a very costly mistake had he run into any of his acquaintances with her by his side, because there would have been no way for him to explain her away. However, he managed to escape unscathed.
I looked up Faiza Outalha on the Internet, and saw that an Indian journalist had interviewed her. I read the interview transcript with interest, and it only confirmed what I had found out—that David had betrayed not only me, but many others. Faiza even said in her interview that she felt David wasn’t a good Muslim, that he used Islam merely as a cover. She said he used to pray like a robot, unfeeling and uncaring. He also used to treat her badly and had lied to her constantly, a fact that ultimately led her to make enquiries about her husband. What she found out shocked her so much that she immediately went to the FBI, even going to the extent of saying that he knew Osama bin Laden to get their attention. She told them that David had links with the LeT, but instead of helping her, she said that her complaint actually ruffled quite a few feathers. One of the Americans, a blond man at the US embassy, even tried to hit her, because all of them thought she was ratting on her husband who was actually one of their own. Faiza said David was an American soldier, a spy who worked for the DEA. They should have stopped him but they did nothing because he worked for them.
Faiza also believed, 120 per cent as she said, that David had had an affair with a Bollywood actress while he was in Mumbai, a fact that must have distressed her no end.
I felt sorry for the poor woman. She was only trying to do the right thing when she found out what a monster David was. In fact, she unknowingly put herself in grave danger, and even we
nt to Hafiz Saeed to tell him about David’s LeT connections. At the time, she had no idea who Saeed was, just that he was a religious man. She also knew Major Iqbal, although she never met Abdur Rehman Pasha. Now, Faiza lives in constant fear of death, knowing that they wouldn’t hesitate to kill her.
Faiza also said that the two of them had sat watching the 26/11 attack unfold on TV, and she had been startled to see that he wasn’t angry at all. She, on the other hand, was badly shaken, as she had stayed at the Taj herself, and to watch it go up in flames was horrifying. She remembered, too, that David had asked her for forgiveness sometime before the attack, saying that he had done something bad. Despite all the evidence, there is one point on which both Faiza and I agree. Headley was playing the role of a real-life Agent 007, a personality he loved to emulate. He wasn’t really a killer, and Faiza too believes that.
Right now, Faiza wants to move on. She knows that David isn’t rotting in jail, the Americans are taking good care of him. She wants to leave her past with David behind, find a lawyer and get a divorce. Once the FBI arrested Headley, it wasn’t long before they picked up others as well. Two weeks after his arrest, on 18 October, his friend Rana was arrested. The First World Immigration office was raided in Chicago. The authorities also raided a Grundy County meat processing plant that was owned by Rana; the plant was sealed right after.
Headley will be tried, yes, but by now, I have figured out how his mind works. He did exactly what was expected of him. As he had done many times in the past, he implicated his colleagues. He was very quick to speak against his childhood friend Rana and turn approver in the case, thus saving himself from the death penalty and putting Rana in even greater danger. Poor Rana! I don’t think he had very much to do with the Mumbai attack, except that he allowed Headley to use the name of his business as a front for his activities.
Headley is now being tried in a US court, and has already made a plea bargain where his indictment under twelve counts will be undertaken by the judge and decided upon. But I’m sure that he will get much more leniency from them than his colleagues or his latest victim, Rana, will. Very soon, I know, he will again be working for the American authorities in some other part of the world.
Mr Chameleon, Mr Actor, Headley the hypocrite, will go scot-free after wriggling his way out of the charges against him.
PRAISE FOR S. HUSSAIN ZAIDI
‘No reporter covering this beat has been more assiduous or influential than S. Hussain Zaidi, whose work has appeared in several newspapers over the past 15 years, including The Indian Express, Mid-Day and The Asian Age’ —Che Kurrien in GQ
‘His writerly voice has always been that of a newspaperman: controlled, grim … His writing rarely veers from straightforward agglomeration of facts, but he displays an acute eye for emotional detail’ —Mint
‘The undeniable strength of Black Friday is the depth and intelligence with which Zaidi portrays the bombers themselves. In penetrating this closed world, Zaidi ridicules the shorthand caricature of terrorists so popular nowadays: that they are “evil”, “fanatic” or “mad”. Instead, we get to read about ordinary men who start out with earthly motivations and none-too-resolute convictions but who ultimately come to embrace terror. Such portraits reveal more about the roots of terrorism than a thousand theories about the clash of civilizations could.’ —Time Magazine
‘Dongri to Dubai is an intermittently fascinating account of Dawood Ibrahim’s transformation from neighbourhood thug to global gangster. S. Hussain Zaidi has built up a reputation for scoops’ —Nandini Ramnath, Timeout
‘The stories of the 13 women [in Mafia Queens of Mumbai] vibrate with drama, intrigue and unexpected pathos’ —Zara Murao in Hindustan Times
‘Mafia Queens of Mumbai … is a page-turner with saucy excerpts from the lives of smugglers’ molls and underworld doyennes’ —Vishwas Kulkarni, Mumbai Mirror
‘Despite it being a work of non-fiction, Dongri to Dubai can read something like a script of an exciting movie. There is great detailing even with minor characters’ —Sunday Guardian
‘The strength of Dongri to Dubai lies in the simplicity of the narrative and language. It is an eye opener to various events that shaped Mumbai and India’ —Open
‘Dongri to Dubai … is a thrill-a-minute page-turner’ —Sunday Mid-day
‘[Dongri to Dubai] is a compelling portrait of the dons and the hit men’ —Naresh Fernandes in The Hindu
POSTSCRIPT
It has been nearly four years since the horrific terror attacks on Mumbai. Scarred but far from shattered, Mumbai has moved on, as has India. But we have not forgotten what happened on that fateful day. All through these four years, India has kept insisting that the attack was planned on Pakistani soil, and Pakistan has been equally adamant in denying this. However, the capture of David Coleman Headley opened up a Pandora’s box of shocking facts, exposing the treachery of Pakistan’s ISI and the LeT to the world. But Headley wasn’t just a Pakistani terrorist. Although he sided with the LeT and the Al Qaeda and helped carry on the so-called jehad, he was playing the field for the Americans as well.
In many ways, the Mumbai terror attack was Headley’s own Shawshank Redemption moment. In this cult Hollywood flick, the protagonist Andy Dufresne goes to jail and eventually escapes by tunnelling through the prison walls, crawling through a sewer, and acquiring his freedom in the dead of night. But this wasn’t something he did on the spur of the moment. Andy’s plan required him to literally chip away at it for several years. Each night when the prison lights went out, he would remove a tiny bit of rock from his prison cell to get closer and closer to his eventual escape. In the meantime, he slowly won the confidence of the crooked warden to the extent of maintaining the accounts of his ill-gotten money.
Similarly, Headley won the confidence of his American masters to earn his freedom. Headley was serving probation for a conviction in a drug case. But it was terminated abruptly, with three years still to go, in November 2001 and he was sent to Pakistan. The objective was to shift him from anti-drug work to gathering intelligence in Pakistan.
In his documentary The Perfect Terrorist, ProPublica correspondent Sebastian Rotella quoted US officials as saying that Headley remained an operative for the DEA in some capacity until as late as 2005. Headley has himself testified that he did not stop working for the DEA until September 2002.
Which brings us to the moot point: was he or wasn’t he? Was David Headley in cahoots with American Intelligence agencies or did he succumb to the call of his Pakistani roots? David Headley’s real identity is a conundrum. India has her own views. Former Home Secretary G.K. Pillai has clearly stated that the possibility of Headley being a double agent is a fairly credible one.
Pillai was in charge of the hectic parlays between the US and Indian governments after Headley was arrested, and is one of several senior Indian officials who is convinced that Headley was actually a double agent. Speaking exclusively in an interview with me, Pillai listed several reasons that led him to conclude that Headley was an American agent.
First, Headley has worked for a period of twelve years for the DEA. It is a known fact that the US never lets go of anyone who has worked for them for so long. During this time, Headley would most certainly have found out a lot about his American handlers and their activities, information which cannot be allowed to fall into outside hands. There is also the investment factor. If the US has put in all that time and money and effort into getting Headley to work for the DEA, they will not let it all go to waste; they are likely to try and use it in some way. Either way, the implication is that he still works for them.
Second, Headley managed to change his name and get a passport issued in a new name. Over and above that, his passport has only his mother’s name on it, which is very rare. In fact, Pillai believes that Headley is perhaps the only American who doesn’t have his father’s name—Salim Gilani—on his passport. What is most surprising is how the US authorities allowed the passport to be issued in his c
hanged name without any mention of his father’s name on it.
The third reason, Pillai said, that speaks volumes about Headley’s ties with the US, apart from his ties with the Islamic terror groups, is that he flitted in and out of Pakistan and India eight or nine times in the last three or four years. The entire world knows how paranoid the US is about its security, especially after 9/11. And it monitors closely those who it is even slightly suspicious about. Heaven help you if you are a Muslim man travelling frequently between Pakistan or India and the US. In such a setting, therefore, it is suspiciously strange that Headley was never questioned or intercepted. His frequent calls to and from Pakistan too were never intercepted, which is something the US always does. But with Headley, the communication channels always remained open and unhindered.
Pillai’s next point was about the extradition treaty that India has with the US government. If a criminal involved in crimes in India is apprehended on US soil, India has the full right to ask for the criminal to be deported, and the US has to oblige. When he went on trial, Headley made a plea bargain with the US: he would cooperate fully, and in exchange, he would not be extradited to India, Pakistan or Denmark. Surprisingly, despite the extradition treaty, the US agreed. ‘Why, without consulting the Indian government, did they hastily agree to Headley’s plea bargain of no extradition, if they did not have a vested interest?’ asks Pillai.
Then there was the question of getting access to Headley after his arrest. Not only did it take a very long time to be given access to him, but also, the NIA was only granted limited access. ‘We were clearly told what to ask and what not to broach,’ Pillai said. ‘If you allow us to interrogate Headley, why would you say that there are certain questions that cannot be asked? It can have only one answer. They knew that if we delved into uncomfortable territory during our interrogation of Headley, the role of the US would definitely come up, which, of course, they didn’t want.’
HEADLEY AND I Page 18