David Headley is currently serving a 35-year sentence in the United States after pleading guilty to 12 international terrorism charges.
50 Facts About David Headley
2.
Under the direction of Lashkar chiefs, David Headley performed five spying missions in Mumbai to scout targets for the attacks, which killed 166 people.
3.
David Headley was arrested at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago while on his way to Pakistan in October 2009.
4.
At the trial of Tahawwur Hussain Rana, an alleged co-conspirator, David Headley gave detailed information about the participation of Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence in carrying out the attacks.
5.
David Headley was prosecuted by a Mumbai special court in early February 2016, via a video link from his prison cell in the United States.
6.
David Headley was prosecuted by special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, the same lawyer who represented the state during the Mumbai attack trials.
7.
David Coleman Headley was born as Daood Sayed Gilani in Washington, DC, to Sayed Salim Gilani and Alice Serrill Headley.
8.
David Headley was a student at the Community College of Philadelphia but dropped out without a degree in the 1990s.
9.
David Headley eventually moved to New York City and opened a video rental business.
10.
David Headley allegedly tried to set up heroin dealers with jailhouse phone calls that were not monitored by DEA agents.
11.
David Headley befriended LeT's spiritual leader, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, and committed himself to the group's struggle against India, which was supported by the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's premier intelligence service.
12.
David Headley himself has claimed that he ended his work for the DEA in September 2002; other agencies claim that he remained a DEA operative as late as 2005.
13.
David Headley was interviewed three times by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force.
14.
The name change would make it easier for David Headley to hide his Pakistani ancestry and pass as a Westerner, leading anyone he encountered to assume he was a tourist.
15.
In January 2006, David Headley established ties with Adbur Rehman Hashim "Pasha" Syed, a retired Pakistan Army major and LeT militant, who put him in touch with Major Iqbal, a mysterious figure who is believed to have coordinated LeT activity through his capacity as an ISI officer.
16.
Under sworn testimony, David Headley recalled meeting Iqbal and his superior, a Pakistani colonel, in a safe house.
17.
In 2007, David Headley met a Moroccan medical student in Lahore named Faiza Outalha, eventually marrying her as his third wife; unlike his second wife, Outalha reportedly knew that David Headley was already married and approved of the potential arrangement.
18.
In December 2007, Outalha filed assault charges against David Headley after getting into an altercation with his servant outside of their house in Lahore.
19.
Between 2007 and 2008, David Headley made five trips to Mumbai, scouting local landmarks where LeT terrorists would carry out the multi-pronged attack.
20.
When LeT decided to target the Nariman House, a Jewish community center, David Headley visited the location posing as a Jew.
21.
David Headley took boat tours to look for places where the attackers could reach the city through the waterfront; he found a landing location at a fishermen's slum in the Colaba area of southern Mumbai, where he gathered GPS coordinates.
22.
David Headley lived the high life during his time in Mumbai, and developed a rapport with the very people he was planning to help attack.
23.
David Headley joined an upscale gym, frequented nightclubs, and befriended Rahul Bhatt, the son of Bollywood director Mahesh Bhatt, who guided him through the city's party scene.
24.
David Headley responded by reporting Headley to the US embassy in Islamabad, and later submitting to interviews with State Department and ICE officials, describing his Mumbai activities at length.
25.
However, Outalha later admitted that she embellished some of her accusations against David Headley, leading the Americans to not take her claims seriously.
26.
David Headley visited the editorial offices of Jyllands-Posten in January 2009, claiming to be interested in buying ad space.
27.
Elsewhere during his trip, David Headley collected video footage of Copenhagen, including the offices of Jyllands-Posten; looked into leasing an apartment that could be used by LeT's attack team; and inquired about getting a job as a secretary.
28.
David Headley planned to return to Copenhagen during the summer of 2009.
29.
However, when David Headley visited Derby on July 26,2009, Simon and Bash informed him that they did not want to participate in the Denmark plot and were unable to supply weapons, instead giving him US$15,000 in financing.
30.
David Headley then traveled to Stockholm to meet a veteran militant named Farid.
31.
David Headley was accused of traveling to Denmark to scout the Jyllands-Posten office and a nearby synagogue.
32.
The FBI later additionally charged David Headley of conspiring to bomb targets in the Mumbai attacks and providing material support to LeT.
33.
In March 2009, David Headley made another trip to India to conduct surveillance of the National Defence College in Delhi, and of Chabad Houses in various cities in India.
34.
Indian investigators were surprised at how easily David Headley had obtained a visa to enter India, a process that is extremely difficult for Pakistani nationals and Pakistani-origin individuals.
35.
David Headley falsely stated on his visa application that his father's name was William Headley and that his own name at birth was "Headley", a claim that was difficult to refute since the US passport, unlike the Indian one, does not provide the father's name, and does not require endorsements on name changes by the passport holder.
36.
On his visits to India, David Headley befriended several people, including Rahul Bhatt, the son of Mahesh Bhatt, a famous movie producer, who said he never suspected David Headley of any wrongdoing.
37.
Some Indian analysts have speculated that David Headley was a double agent for the Central Intelligence Agency that had infiltrated LeT, an accusation denied by the CIA.
38.
David Headley stated that the ISI was engaged with the Lashkar commanders responsible for the Mumbai deaths and injuries at each and every stage of the plot.
39.
David Headley mentioned that Major Sameer Ali, Major Iqbal and Major Haroon Ashique, who are serving officers of the Pakistan Army, collaborated with the LeT.
40.
David Headley has spoken of how after the Mumbai attacks, ISI wanted LeT to disown them in order to prevent global attention to the terror group.
41.
David Headley said that while he had started off as a Lashkar recruit, he started drifting towards al-Qaida under the influence of Major Abdul Rahman Saeed, who retired in 2002.
42.
David Headley was respected by the retired major because of the data which he provided for the Mumbai attack.
43.
David Headley has claimed that Ishrat Jahan, thought to be a case of staged police "encounter killing", was a trained LeT suicide bomber.
44.
On May 31,2011 David Headley contradicted his previous statements, and testified that the Inter-Services Intelligence leadership was not involved in planning the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
45.
The Hindustan Times stated that David Headley had visited Pune in July 2008 and March 2009 and referred to him as a Lashkar-e-Taiba member.
46.
David Headley's report was shared with India's Union Home Ministry.
47.
David Headley had provided details on the operations of the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which planned the Mumbai attacks, and information that he provided to the government led to charges against Tahawwur Hussain Rana and six other terrorist figures.
48.
On December 10,2015, a Mumbai court pardoned David Headley, making him an approver in the Mumbai case.
49.
David Headley told the court that LeT made two unsuccessful attempts to carry out terror attacks before finally striking in November 2008, once in September and again in October.
50.
On July 24,2018, it was reported that David Headley was seriously injured after being attacked in prison and admitted to the critical care unit of Evanston Hospital of the NorthShore University HealthSystem.