LeT target: Defence college

The National Defence College (NDC), a prestigious military institution in Delhi that trains senior officers, was the target of the two Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) members arrested in the United States last month.

This was disclosed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Tuesday in Chicago, where it opposed the bail application of one of the arrested men, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Pakistani who holds Canadian citizenship and lives in the US.

Rana and David Coleman Headley were busted after the FBI established that they were conspiring with key LeT leaders in Pakistan to attack targets in India as well as the headquarters of the Danish newspaper that had published a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.

Headley, a US citizen who in 2006 changed his name from Daood Gilani, has been in constant touch with Rana and contacts in Pakistan for the purported terror plot, according to the FBI. Headley was arrested on October 3 by the Chicago FBI’s joint terrorism task force at O’Hare International Airport from where he was to travel to Pakistan.  

According to FBI disclosures, the LeT plot was to target the NDC, the tri-service institution opposite New Delhi’s Birla House, where Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in 1948. Meritorious military officers of the rank of brigadier and civilians of equivalent ranks in the bureaucracy are trained at the NDC for leadership.

A team of Indian intelligence sources is in the US to question Rana and Headley, who were in contact with terrorists such as Ilyas Kashmiri, the operational chief of the Azad Kashmir section of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (Huji).

The US military had claimed a few months ago to have killed Kashmiri, but that claim is turning out be false, the FBI disclosures show; Headley met Kashmiri, who has played a crucial role in terrorist attacks in India, in Pakistan’s FATA region early this year.

Minister of state for defence MM Pallam Raju said in New Delhi that “adequate precautions” have been taken in view of the threat. According to the FBI, since at least late 2008, Headley has allegedly “identified and conducted surveillance” of potential targets in Denmark during two trips.

Among the Indian targets was also one ‘Rahul’, which is probably a codename for a famous personality. Home minister P Chidambaram has said ‘Rahul’ does not refer to Rahul Gandhi. The FBI has also named a ‘Member A’’ — an LET member “who has substantial influence and responsibility within the organisation and whose identity is known to the government”.

In July and August 2009, Headley wrote emails to LeT’s Member A asking if the Denmark project was on hold, and “whether a visit to India that LeT Member A had asked him to undertake was for the purpose of surveillance of targets for a new terrorist attack”, according to the FBI. “These emails reflect that LeT Member A was placing a higher priority on using Headley to assist in planning a new attack in India than on completing the planned attack in Denmark,” the FBI disclosures show.