New Delhi:
In a new revelation on 26/11 terrorist David Headley, The Washington Post reported that three years before the Mumbai terror attack, the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) agents got a tip that an American businessman was training in Pakistan with the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
The previously undisclosed allegations against David Coleman Headley, who became a key figure in the plot that killed 166 people, came from his wife after a domestic dispute that resulted in his arrest in 2005.
The paper goes on to say that Headley's wife gave three interviews to FBI agents in which she told them that he was an active militant in the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, had trained extensively in its Pakistani camps, and had shopped for night-vision goggles and other equipment.
The wife also allegedly told agents that Headley had bragged of working as a paid US informant while he trained with the terrorists in Pakistan. Federal officials say the FBI "looked into" the tip, but they declined to say, if any, action was taken.
However, reacting to the newspaper reports US Amabssador to India, Timothy J Roemer said, "We are looking into published reports about possible information related to David Headley that goes back before the Mumbai attacks and how such information may have been handled."
Headley was jailed briefly in New York on charges of domestic assault but was not prosecuted. He wasn't arrested until 11 months after the Mumbai attack, when British intelligence alerted US authorities that he was in contact with Al-Qaida operatives in Europe.
Headley, a Chicago-based American with roots in Pakistan, had confessed of conducting several recce missions as part of the planning for the ghastly attack on India's financial capital in November 2008.
After being arrested in October 2009, the 49-year old entered into a plea bargain with the US government in March 2010 and offered to be available to foreign investigators through deposition, video conferencing or letters rogatory.
Officers of National Investigation Agency (NIA) and other law officers had traveled to Chicago in May in order to interrogate David Headley.