Arrests in Chicago drive home global nature of terrorism threat - washingtonpost.com

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By Peter Slevin and Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 20, 2009

CHICAGO -- David C. Headley, a peripatetic Chicagoan accused of scouting potential terrorism targets in India and plotting to kill two Danish journalists, was not always David C. Headley.

Until 2006, he was Daood Gilani, but he told investigators he had changed his name to raise less suspicion when he traveled abroad. He lived anonymously in an apartment leased in the name of a dead person. He changed e-mail accounts often and spoke in code on the telephone.

The strategy worked less than perfectly, according to the FBI, which arrested him on terrorism charges last month at O'Hare International Airport on the first leg of a trip to Pakistan. In his luggage were digital videos he took of a Danish newspaper office and a book titled "How to Pray Like a Jew."

Headley and Chicago businessman Tahawwur Hussain Rana are suspected Islamist militants charged not with targeting the United States, but with staging foreign operations from relative anonymity on American soil. Their profile is a fresh one, and it is being viewed by U.S. authorities with alarm.

One counterterrorism official described as "eye-opening" an investigation that concluded the two men worked with two Pakistan-based terrorist organizations allied with al-Qaeda, Lashkar-i-Taiba and Harkat-e-Jihad-e-Islami. It is a reminder, others said, that al-Qaeda or its imitators continue to try to build a network of operatives inside the United States.

The case "stands our counterterrorism approach on its head," said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), chairman of a Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence. "We've been looking for people who want to attack us, whether foreign or U.S. persons, in the United States. We haven't really been looking at U.S. persons who want to attack other countries."

Several American officials saw an echo of the case against Najibullah Zazi, a Denver airport shuttle driver accused in September of training with al-Qaeda in Pakistan and plotting a backpack bombing in New York.

A U.S. law enforcement official said investigators are tracking several suspects in the Zazi case, mostly in the United States. A counterterrorism official said the investigation into Headley's domestic contacts remains open and active.

Mumbai attacks

One of Headley's alleged Lashkar-i-Taiba associates was arrested in Pakistan this summer, and the U.S. case has triggered a broad investigation in India. Government authorities there suspect Headley played a role in advance of the November 2008 terrorist assault on Mumbai and may have been working on future operations, as the FBI alleges.

Indian police say they think Headley scouted Mumbai targets, including a cafe and two upscale hotels that drew fire in the coordinated attack, which left 165 people dead. He also allegedly posed as a Jew to visit Chabad House, the site of an Orthodox Jewish center also targeted that day.

The investigation of Headley and Rana captured telephone conversations and e-mails with Pakistani militants, according to court documents in Chicago. Among Headley's associates was Ilyas Kashmiri, a leader of Harkat-e-Jihad-e-Islami.

Attorneys for Headley and Rana declined to discuss recent developments or FBI reports that Headley is now cooperating with U.S. authorities. Lawyer Patrick W. Blegen has told reporters that Rana, a Canadian citizen born in Pakistan, is not guilty and looks forward to answering the charges in court.

Blending in

Headley, 49, and Rana, 48, met as students in a military school in the Pakistani town of Hasan Abdal. Decades later on Chicago's far North Side, Rana is considered a well-connected businessman on Devon Avenue, a bustling corridor crowded with shops owned by residents of Pakistani and Indian heritage.

Before his October arrest, Rana ran his businesses, including a rural Illinois farm that slaughters lambs and goats according to Islamic law, from a cluttered storefront on Devon called First World Immigration Services. He provided space to Raymond J. Sanders, an American immigration lawyer.

"He's an excellent and all-around gentleman who has many business interests," said Sanders, who described Rana as a non-practicing medical doctor "very active in the community." He said Rana focused on clients seeking immigration status in Canada.

Headley appeared in the office sporadically, according to Sanders.

"He came in, talked to people, talked to Dr. Rana, worked on the computer a little bit and didn't say a lot," Sanders said. "He bounced in and out and did his business with Rana."

Rana is charged with "providing material support" to conspirators who plotted to "murder and maim." The FBI contends that Rana supported Headley -- who allegedly used the immigration business as a front -- in a plot to murder a Danish cartoonist and editor connected to the 2005 publication of cartoons lampooning militant Islamists.

According to the charges, Rana lied to a former classmate and official in Pakistan's Chicago consulate in an attempt to get a five-year visa for Headley.

News of the investigation broke in dramatic fashion in Kinsman, Ill., the small town 80 miles southwest of Chicago where Rana owns a farm. One day in October, scores of federal agents backed by an armed helicopter swept into town and searched the property.

When the residents of Kinsman, population 100, learned about the arrest, they said they started wondering about the Muslims who had appeared on Fridays at the farm to pray and buy halal meat.

"They could be terrorists -- it did cross my mind," Mayor Mark Harlow said.

William Rodosky, 72, who once owned the farm, calls himself "dumbfounded." He started getting to know Rana years ago and considered him "a polite, respectful, well-dressed man and a good businessman."

"This is a small-town farming community," Rodosky said. "It's something the FBI will take care of. No one's going to be blowing anything up around here."

Hsu reported from Washington. Staff writer Kari Lydersen in Kinsman and correspondent Emily Wax in New Delhi contributed to this report.