New Delhi/ Washington: He could well have been discovered by John Le Carre. He came from Barack Obama's hometown, an Islamist at heart with a Christian name who claimed to be a Jew. His mission was to cause mayhem in India. As he remains in an American prison, Indian detectives are slowly uncovering David Coleman Headley's silent but vital role in the horrific Mumbai terror attack.

The Pakistan born American citizen was not alone in his mission. Along with childhood buddy and Canadian Tahawwur Hussain Rana -- also born in Pakistan -- he toured India extensively in the run up to the November 2008 Mumbai strike that left 166 Indians and foreigners dead in three days of naked terror.

Emerging profiles of Pakistani expatriates Tahawwur Hussain Rana and Daood Gilani a.k.a. David Headley, the two principal accused in a transcontinental terror plot, show they belonged to elite Pakistani families rooted in the military and the diplomatic world, far removed from the clichéd image of indigent madrassa recruits that is often associated with Pakistani terrorism. It appears they are both in the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed/ Mohammed Atta/Omar Sheikh mould - Pakistani transplants in the west who struggled to come to terms with liberal western outlook.

That they both went to Hasan Abdal Cadet College, an elite boys’ military residential school in Pakistan that counts generals and diplomats among its alumni is well known through the FBI affidavit. But it now emerges that while both Rana and Gilani migrated to the west in their teens, they retain considerable influential family connections in Pakistan. Two of Rana’s brothers are said to be serving officers in the Pakistan army; and Gilani’s pedigree is as privileged - he is the son of a now deceased diplomat.

The discovery that two expatriates well-entrenched in America but having active military-diplomatic connections in Pakistan has sent alarms through security establishments because of how easily they could move between the two worlds. On Thursday, in a calculated leak the US media, American officials directly linked the duo to a former Pakistani military officer, though, the New York Times reported circumspectly, ''they have long suspected connections between extremists and many members of the Pakistani military.''

The Pakistani military's connections to terrorism are rather more direct, best illustrated in reported telephone intercepts that show both current army chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and his predecessor Pervez Musharraf (durign the Kargil infiltration) endorsing terrorists and their tactics. Washington is still coy about outing Pakistan on this matter, but for the first time, US officials are sending out unmistakable signals that they know the Pakistani military is involved in terrorist activities and will not hesitate to call them on this.

For now though, US officials have declined to name the ''former'' military officer involved in the Rana-Gilani case. But he is said to have ''recently'' left the Pakistani Army and held the rank of colonel or brigadier general. There are conflicting reports about whether he is currently in Pakistani custody, with some reports suggesting that he was arrested but freed under pressure from the military. Identified in court documents as Individual A, he is said to be different person from Rana’s two brothers, who are in the military but so far have not been implicated in the case.

Meanwhile, the Rana-Gilani/Headley trail in the west has thrown up a sketchy but fascinating story of how a young man from Pakistan grew up in a dysfunctional manner in the west

Gilani’s mother Serill Headley, who died in 2008, was a Pennsylvania resident who was married in the sixties to a Pakistani diplomat (from whom Daood took his last name) and lived in Pakistan before their separation. She returned to the US in the early 70s and bought a 100-year old tavern in Philadelphia, renaming it Khyber Pass bar/restaurant and running it successfully as a bustling nightspot for more than a decade.

In 1977, after at least two attempts, she got custody of the young Daood Gilani, who was at the Hasan Abdal Cadet College at that time. Transported to Philadelphia, Daood apparently suffered from culture shock. Raised a Muslim, he had trouble adjusting to the idea that his mother ran a bar, according to a report that that time in the Philadelphia Inquirer, which traced his background in a story on Thursday. "He has never been alone with, much less had a date with, a girl, except the servant girls of his household," the paper quoted a column from that time from its archives.

Serill Headley turned over the business to her son in 1985 and he quickly ran it into the ground, according to current owners of the restaurant. Meantime, he is said to have studied accounting, possibly at a community college in the Philadelphia region, and operated a video store, FliksVideo, with his mother.

In 1997, under his birth name of Gilani, he was convicted on federal charges in Brooklyn of smuggling heroin into the country and sentenced to 15 months in prison, according to the Inquirer. Serrill Headley died in 2008, two years after Gilani changed his name to reflect his western pedigree as a cover for his terror plans. And in a filmi twist to the Gilani/Headley character, family members in an archived Inquirer report have described him as having striking eyes - one blue and one brownish-green.

Rana, like Gilani, also came to the west decades ago, although the circumstances of his migration are less clear. He became a Canadian citizen, but lives primarily in Chicago with his Samraz Akhtar Rana, two daughters and a son, owning several businesses and a farm which supplies halal meat to his grocery store in Chicago’s desi enclave, Devon Avenue. Rana though still owns a home outside Ottawa in Canada where his ailing father, and another one of his brothers, a well-regarded journalist with the political newspaper Hill Times, live.

The question facing investigators is whether Rana and Headley were actively considering terrorist attack themselves or whether they were on a reconnaissance mission to scope the target and scout for recruits. Both are in their late 40s, which does not fit the typical profile of an active jihadi, although Gilani-Headley is on record as saying the Danish cartoons on Prophet Mohammed made him “feel disposed towards violence for the offending parties.”


Indian officials now say, privately, that Headley and Rana both reported to the same Pakistani jehadists who controlled the 10 male terrorists who sneaked into Mumbai a year ago and went on a slaughter spree.

It is now clear that it was Headley, looking every inch a middle class American, who lived in Mumbai for months to obviously sketch every site in the city that eventually came under attack from the terrorists.

The Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based terror group that is blamed for the Mumbai attack, could not have discovered a more loyal Islamist warrior than the 49-year-old from Chicago.

Now at the centre of an international probe by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of India and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), he is the first known case of the Lashkar drafting an American for terrorist attacks against India.

Headley, who apparently had no job, and Canadian businessman Rana have been accused of plotting terror attacks in India and Europe codenamed The Northern Project and Mickey Mouse respectively -- which the FBI feels had the blessings of the Al Qaeda.

On the radar was a Danish newspaper that had published cartoons of Prophet Mohammed, triggering riots across the Muslim world.

The Northern Project sought to hit India, where the two men travelled extensively and repeatedly. Between them, they visited half-a-dozen cities including Mumbai, Pune, Lucknow, New Delhi, Kochi, Ahmedabad and Jaipur.

Headley paid nine visits to India since 2006. He came to Delhi at least thrice and he was in Mumbai on two occasions. When 26/11 happened, Headley and Rana were presumably in Pakistan.

Because of his Christian sounding name and American passport, Headley found it easy to get across India.

Indian officials believe their arrest last month in the US foiled perhaps another carnage when India was preparing to mark the the first anniversary of the Mumbai attack.

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