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A Chicago man has been charged with conspiracy in connection with the 2008 terrorist attack in the Indian city of Mumbai.

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MARCO WERMAN: It was a year ago that terrorists attacked the Indian city of Mumbai and killed 166 people in the process. Today a Chicago man was charged in connection with that assault. Federal prosecutors say David Coleman Headley conducted surveillance on potential targets in Mumbai. He’s now been charged with conspiracy to bomb public places in India, to murder and maim people in India, to provide material support to foreign terrorist plots, and other offences. Jeff Coen is a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He’s been following the ongoing case against Headley.

JEFF COEN: He was charged in October – I don’t know if your listeners remember – with surveying a newspaper in Denmark for a possible attack to sort of respond to cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed that that paper published in 2005. And today charges were upgrading against Headley to include the Mumbai plot.

WERMAN: And so what is the connection that federal prosecutors found between that Denmark case and the attack in Mumbai?

COEN: Well the connection is a terror organization in Pakistan called Lashkar-e-taiba which is the group that’s blamed for the Mumbai attacks. Essentially Headley is accused of being what amounts to a scout for that organization based in Chicago. He traveled to India, beginning in September 2006 and took photographs and visited a number of the sites that wound up being attacked last year. And then he went on to be a scout again for the newspaper attack which was eventually thwarted.

WERMAN: And what was the evidence against him?

COEN: The evidence against him is a lot of e-mail traffic and other communication with some figures in Pakistan which are linked to Lashkar and they know that he was actually underwent some partially training beginning in ’02 in Pakistan and then when he eventually began to settle in the US he changed his name from Daood Gilani to David Headley to try to avoid any suspicion and avoid you know headaches when he traveled because of his name. And then he just sort of bounced around the country. Settled in Chicago a few years ago and began traveling from here for these missions.

WERMAN: And the charges against him there are quite a few of them. Are they all going to stick?

COEN: Well we’ll see. I mean he’s … . This is also today was the first time it’s confirmed that he’s a cooperator. So on some level some of these allegations are based on things that he is telling the authorities here in the United States now. So presumably at some point we might see some kind of a plea from him or he’ll try to come up with some kind of an arrangement where his penalties is lessened a little bit for his cooperation. But he’s talking about apparently these missions that he went on and who his contacts were and you know to what extent he was a member of Lashkar.

WERMAN: Right and let’s go into that connection with Lashkar-e-taiba. What is the evidenced that he has any connection with them at all?

COEN: Well the evidence I think chiefly is now going to be statements that he’s making that he is in fact what they’re alleging. But they have you know chronicled some of his movements travel wise so they’ll be able to corroborate things he says by knowing that he was in fact in Pakistan at certain times. And it looks like his pattern basically was to go to a site, scout it out, take pictures, make notes and then travel from the site back to Pakistan and speak with figures in Lashkar and help them with planning before he returned home. So they’ll be able to sort of follow and there’ll be a paper trail of his travels that will corroborate things he says.

WERMAN: Is David Headley unique in Chicago or are there any signs that he’s got other collaborators?

COEN: Well we do have one other Chicago man charged in the newspaper case. A man named Tahawwur Rana who was kind of an interesting figure here because he owned an immigration business which Headley was sort of working for as a front. He was traveling purporting to be a representative of the immigration business and Rana also had Halal meat packing facility in the suburbs here in Chicago. So we do have one other person connected to it who’s here. Today authorities also charged a retired Pakistani general with being the contact person in Pakistan related to the newspaper attack. So he remains at large. But in terms of Chicago in general we’ve had some terror cases, or terror funding cases really, before form here. I would say what makes this one unique is it’s sort of a reversal of you know authorities sort of fear in the United States is to have operatives coming in to perform attacks here. These are people who are based here and were really being exported to their locations to help plan and even help others carry out attacks.

WERMAN: And what now for David Headley? What happens next in this?

COEN: Well David Headley as a cooperator doesn’t have any firm court dates coming up. He remains in custody here. He’s in no position to get anything like bond so he’ll remain in some kind of a secure facility in Chicago while they work the investigation.

WERMAN: Jeff Coen, a reporter with the Chicago Tribune in Chicago. Thanks very much.

COEN: Thank you.

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