The Mind of a Terrorist

by Kaare Sørensen

  And then, one day, one of the agents walked through the front door of Rana’s office. The agent visited under a false pretext, observing everything in detail, and soon after wrote an extensive report about the place: three small rooms on the west side, four small rooms on the other. Lots of computers. Lots of people. No bombs or weapons immediately visible.

  At Rana’s slaughterhouse in Kinsman, south of Chicago, the FBI began constant monitoring, for fear that Headley and Rana might have a bomb or other similar device hidden somewhere in the elaborate building complex. Most of the time, they saw only sheep and goats standing around and chewing their cud.

  The authorities also broke into Rana’s white BMW to install microphones. The FBI was not at all reassured by what they heard being discussed in the car.

  16

  A DESPERATE MAN

  Chicago

  Saturday, August 22, 2009

  There’s nothing like a phone that doesn’t ring. Or a letter that never arrives.

  No news is bad news.

  Headley stayed in his secret apartment in Chicago; he was back from his trip to Europe, and now he was waiting for a response from Pakistan. He had delivered a small portion of his observations in Denmark to a contact with Ilyas Kashmiri, but he had a lot more to report and he was still hiding the video recordings from Copenhagen Central Station, Jyllands-Posten, and several other locations in Copenhagen on a USB drive in the apartment. Sending the videos over the Internet would be far too risky.

  But there was nothing from Kashmiri.

  And even more frustrating, one of Kashmiri’s contacts in Derby had apparently been driven into hiding. Simon had previously promised Headley that he would travel to North Waziristan and discuss the attack on Jyllands-Posten with Kashmiri, but now there was no getting hold of him in either Derby or Pakistan.

  It had been more than two weeks since Headley returned from Denmark, and when he asked people in Pakistan if there were any signs of life from Simon or Kashmiri, the response was simply no.

  Headley’s funds were also about to run dry. He didn’t have a job, and if something didn’t happen soon, the plans for an attack in Denmark would come to a standstill.

  On August 22, Ramadan came for Muslims around the world. A month during which, according to the prophet Muhammad, heaven is open and the gates to hell are closed. That August day, Headley called Pasha in Pakistan, and as always, the conversation took place through both agreed-upon and improvised codes, intended to make it impossible for the FBI or others to figure out exactly what it was the two men were talking about.

  “First tell me—have you spoken to Dr. Ahsan?” asked Headley.

  “No friend. There is nothing,” replied Pasha on the phone from Pakistan.

  “Contact?”

  “Nowadays, there is no contact.”

  But Headley wanted an answer so he could move forward with his plans.

  “If you’re not able to get in contact with him, then what to do about the business: to start it or …?”

  “See, I am try, try, try, try, trying. Inshallah.”

  Headley had a plane ticket for two months from then, and he very much wanted the go-ahead.

  “So for now, do it? Delay it? Give priority or put at the end? What is this arrangement?” Headley asked.

  He could hardly hide his apprehension over the phone. Pasha’s emphatic declaration that his missions were divine, and that Allah’s “meter” for good deeds was running high when he was in Denmark, did little to put Headley at ease.

  “The bicycle that you rode—its meter is noted by him,” Pasha said.

  “Yes, it is so. But I need money. To me, I mean, I want my account be filled with money, you see,” said Headley.

  “Inshallah, inshallah,” Pasha replied.

  “I do not only need a credit meter. I need, I mean there must be something.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “I have put money, built gardens. They should flourish as well. Also bear some fruit. They must also be seen that these are going to ruin just by standing there. A ruined garden. While you are watching the meter to see, if it’s running or not.”

  “No, no, in this, that is the thing, this is, this is the thing, sir. You have invested in the business, and after that you must show patience, which is necessary.”

  Things went well for some days before Headley’s impatience and anxiety began gnawing at him again. He spoke with Pasha and asked him to tell Kashmiri what he had already told to Pasha. Just to be safe.

  “Didn’t you convey to him everything whatever I had told you, about him? Or still, it has not been conveyed to him at all?”

  Pasha sighed into the telephone.

  “No. There is absolutely nobody. Look, from there, from there … it has been completely cut off.”

  “But, ah—it is okay, never mind.”

  “No, unable to find it out. It is not like I am just sitting here. I am trying my best for it,” Pasha assured him.

  “Right,” Headley replied.

  From Chicago, Headley had been working to revive an old plan. During the discussions with the leadership in Pakistan, the plan had had several names, but Headley usually spoke of it as “plan B.” It involved a focused, targeted killing of Flemming Rose or Kurt Westergaard. Or perhaps both at the same time. That would be more efficient and easier, as Headley thought now.

  And the plan had another advantage built into it: he could take care of it himself if everything else went down the drain.

  “I like the option B. I can do it on my own, that is. I do not need any help of anyone else. I’m on my own,” Headley said to Pasha.

  Headley was angry. And he wasn’t shy about letting Pasha hear it, although he packaged his message in coded language about accounts, marketing, and profits when he meant killings, suicide videos, and religious rewards.

  “I am qualified. I have studied accounting. I have taken two semesters in college; I could do accounting myself. I can do marketing myself. I do not need anybody’s help. The salary that you will give to someone, I take it myself. And I can do it easily, with no problem at all,” Headley said.

  “I see.”

  “Yeah.”

  It was about time, thought Headley. Now.

  “I want this project from the bottom of my heart,” he declared.

  Headley’s impatience grew from a realization that had been forming for a good while: neither Lashkar nor his connections in the Pakistani intelligence service, ISI, had the will to carry out the mission in Denmark. They preferred for him to prepare new attacks in India, and though his hate for the Indians was by no means sated from the killings in Mumbai, Headley thought it was a waste of energy.

  When you got down to it, Lashkar and ISI were both weaklings. They’d give in to the Pakistani government’s wishes for them to hold back.

  Major Iqbal had declared back in March that he wouldn’t be in touch with Headley any longer, out of fear that he would become implicated in the Mumbai investigation.

  “This idiot is the biggest coward,” Headley told Pasha angrily during a phone conversation.

  “They would say, once it has happened, now again … They would never do business without Mr. Bala’s company,” said Headley, referring to Major Iqbal and ISI.

  “They do not have the guts to start investment or business without Mr. Bala’s company, because Mr. Bala’s people will beat them up.”

  Pasha tried to calm his friend, and the two agreed to meet in Pakistan in one month’s time. That way, Headley would have the opportunity to speak with Kashmiri before his third trip to Denmark.

  “Inshallah, one month, approximately thirty-five days from now, God, if I am still alive …”

  The thought of a visit to Pasha lifted Headley’s spirits.

  “In person, we could bring out a calculator and we will total where the properties, land, and all that. Do it all.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Instead of being on the phone.”

  On some days, Hea
dley seemed willing to cut his ties to Lashkar entirely. On other days, he praised the group and planned new projects for it. But Headley had decided one thing for sure: the mission in Denmark was too important to leave up to them alone.

  In the future, they would be his backup plan if for whatever reason the mission couldn’t be carried out with Kashmiri. Not the other way around.

  That’s why Headley hadn’t told the Lashkar people he’d been to Denmark that summer. Only now did he mention it for the first time, in an offhand way, in an email to Sajid Mir.

  Headley wrote that he was working as the “manager” at a restaurant in Chicago owned by Rana. And: “Last week they sent me to Germany to buy some Butchery equipment and guess where else I went for three days—just for a vacation— :) on Dr. Rana’s expense?”

  Sajid Mir had no problems decoding Headley’s message about a visit to Denmark and wrote back, asking about the trip.

  “We bought some animal butchery equipment,” Headley wrote. “I did get you something. The same gift I got for you last time I was there.”

  That was code for new video recordings from Denmark.

  Sajid Mir wrote a defeatist reply.

  “What ever I am saying, I know, deep in my heart, is futile. Because it’s you.”

  “I don’t understand, what is futile?” Headley wrote.

  “Futile are my advices, because you do what you feel like. Matter and situation is not clear,” Sajid Mir wrote, saying that he hoped Headley would take care of himself.

  From Chicago, Headley wrote back that he certainly did not just do whatever he liked.

  “That’s why I always tell you everything,” wrote Headley—who certainly had not told Sajid Mir everything.

  “I have very few friends left in the world, maybe Dr. Rana and you.”

  But from Pakistan, some good news came later.

  Pasha had found one, perhaps several, potential suicide soldiers who could help Headley with the attack in Copenhagen. He communicated this via code on the phone.

  Headley, though, was more and more dejected. One day, he said outright that Rana’s and his own morale and esprit de corps were “screwed up.” And that it had been that way since right after he came back from his trip around Europe.

  “Why?” Pasha asked.

  “Especially your cousin’s friend, we had high hopes for him,” Headley said, referring to Farid in Stockholm, who had refused to help Headley with the attack.

  “Okay friend, when you come, if you, God willing, if you came, one more, there, I will give you another…. I mean for investment, another person, I found another person there.”

  Pasha had seen to it that Headley got a new contact in Germany: “You know … this place, where we went for the office, office … where you, you know … the car, you rented it?”

  “Yes, yes, yes.”

  “I met a local person of that place.”

  “Okay. When Ramadan is over, I will come over there. Then you can tell me all this. Anyway … your friend, from where I took the car … I mean, in what respect he can do it?”

  “Yes, no, he … if you talk with him or meet him … then only is it possible, because it is not possible to have a detailed conversation over the phone.”

  “No. When I come return, then I will meet him. I’ll go straight to him.”

  “Okay, that is fine, that is fine. Then I will give you some of the details, and then we will do it.”

  Rana’s white BMW headed south down the road, away from Chicago. With him were Headley and one of Headley’s children, who was strapped into a child seat in the back. In the front, the two men sat and discussed the situation as they drove toward Rana’s farm in Kinsman.

  Headley was worried that his contact from Derby might have been arrested. It wasn’t his health or the possible loss of a fighter in Europe that worried him the most. It was the fear that the man from Derby might have talked and revealed Headley’s name.

  It only made him more paranoid that Pasha couldn’t get in touch with Kashmiri.

  “Even when I brought my report to Pasha … Pasha hasn’t even been able to deliver that report to him. It has been a month. A month, yes. It’s difficult, you see. They are scared over there. Today after a long time, there was an attack by a drone…. There had not been one for a month. And it is also taking place in the north where he lives,” Headley said.

  “I see,” said Rana, ever a man of few words.

  “In any case, I don’t know how much Gud will help,” came Headley’s reply.

  “Whatever happens, hope it is for the best.”

  “Yes.”

  “When you know that he received the notes, then …”

  “God willing, he’ll find a solution.”

  Headley was in a talkative mood, and even though the men were alone in the car with one of Headley’s younger children, they continued to speak on and off in code, while Headley enumerated his four future terrorism targets.

  “Denmark, Denmark,” he said several times.

  “You mean?” Rana asked.

  “Denmark,” Headley repeated, then naming the Somnath Temple in the Indian state of Gujarat, which he had previously discussed bombing.

  “Yeah,” Rana replied.

  “And Bollywood, so three, and fourth is Shiv Sena,” Headley said.

  Headley then gave his friend a rather surprising promise: “After this, if I ever pray for any other action, then let me be sentenced to the same punishment as a thief.”

  In other words: his hand was to be cut off.

  “Okay,” Rana replied hesitantly.

  “May Allah help me complete this task,” Headley said.

  The conversation was a continuation of a discussion that the two friends had had a few days earlier. Rana had warned Headley that he was getting to be too old. Too slow, too inattentive. He offered Headley a job on the farm instead, where he could take care of the chickens or slaughter sheep in peace.

  But Rana knew full well that Headley wouldn’t want to retire. Even if all four terrorist operations were successes. If Headley got his plans carried out, he’d just come up with new ones. There was no end to his mission.

  Headley, too, knew this well. That’s how he was made.

  On September 13, Headley made contact once more with Pasha, who had just returned home from a trip to Karachi. Headley was excited to learn the news.

  “Okay. Karachi, then you met doctor in Karachi or not?”

  “No, sir. Met with doctor? No.”

  “Did you find out anything, any news, how is his health?”

  “Uh, no, friend, uh, there … there is some news, that he has gotten married there.”

  “What has he done?”

  “Married. He has gotten married.”

  “Married?”

  “Yes. That is the news. He has gotten married. Don’t know, don’t know exactly … don’t know exactly.”

  “Okay. So he wasn’t before?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Huh?”

  “I said, you don’t understand,” Pasha repeated.

  Either Headley had forgotten that the word married was code for “killed,” or he was simply too shaken to comprehend the message right away.

  “I don’t know when…. The news is arriving, but it’s not … confirmed.”

  “Okay, friend, this is …”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, fine … that’s … okay, anyway …”

  Headley said he hadn’t heard about it on TV, but Pasha explained that the “wedding” probably had been mentioned only on the Internet. Headley spoke casually about Rana and life in Chicago, but he was apparently confused or overwhelmed by the news from Pakistan. After a few sentences, he collected himself and returned to the subject.

  “So it means our company has gone into bankruptcy then.”

  “No … that is … that doesn’t happen like that. God willing, there won’t be bankruptcy. These things will continue…. Anyway, let’s see,
in a few days.”

  “So then the projects and so forth will go into suspension for the time?”

  “No, no, why? Why, sir? Projects will continue. What difference does it make?”

  “Okay.”

  Headley tried to reassure himself that the new contacts in Sweden and Germany would still be of use.

  “I have become very depressed.”

  “No, no, don’t become depressed. One should be even more—one should move forward.”

  “I hope that the foundations on which our company has been formed … those are all okay, right?”

  “No, those … those are … You’ll know once you arrive here.”

  The conversation lasted eleven minutes. And exactly three minutes after he hung up, Headley typed “Ilyas Kashmiri” into the search field on Google. He had to know more.

  Headley had promised Pasha that he wouldn’t say anything about Kashmiri’s death to Rana until the details had been confirmed. Nevertheless, he called his friend later that evening to ask Rana to pray for Kashmiri’s health.

  “It’s just a rumor for now, not confirmed. That maybe he got married.”

  “I see,” Rana said, but in a tone that suggested to Headley that his friend didn’t quite understand.

  “Pray that he didn’t—because he’s already a married man.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “If he is marrying again, then it will disrupt his already married life.”

  “Okay, if you are free one minute?”

  “Yes. You come over, man. Everyone is sleeping. I’m sitting alone watching football.”

  The two men discussed the situation that evening, but while Rana went to work the next day, as he would have done any other day, Headley sat down to scour the Internet. A few days later he found an article that he sent to Rana.

  “International media reports have confirmed while citing US intelligence sources the death of the HuJI leader Ilyas Kashmiri along with Nazimuddin Zalalov, alias Yahyo, a top al-Qaeda leader belonging to the Islamic Jihad of Uzbekistan. The two died in two separate drone attacks conducted on September 7 and September 14, 2009…. Ilyas Kashmiri died after the Predator targeted a car carrying five suspected militants in Khushali Toori Khel village.”