26/11: Closure still a far cry
For India, the 35 year sentence handed down last week by a US district judge in Chicago to David Coleman Headley is of little comfort though the sentence may well keep the 52-year-old Pakistani American who helped lay the groundwork for 26/11 in prison for most of his natural life. It is also little consolation to India that the US judge Harry Leinenweber, while imposing a relatively lighter sentence on Headley for his role in the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, reportedly observed that the Washington born son of a Pakistani diplomat and an American mother who changed his name from Dawood Syed Gilani to avoid detection deserved the death penalty for his role in the Mumbai carnage that left 166 people dead in 2008. “Mr Headly is a terrorist,” said the judge, adding it would have been easier to impose the death penalty. “That’s what you deserve,” the judge told Headley at the sentencing.
Expectedly, the relatively lighter sentence on Headly ~ who was found to have conducted meticulous reconnaisance missions that included eight visits to India wherein he videographed and mapped the target areas in Mumbai that gave the terror operatives some knowledge of the ground to find their way around the target areas in Mumbai ~ has sparked widespread dismay in India. Both the Congress and Opposition BJP leaders have expressed their disappointment at the sentencing. External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said were Headley tried in India, the government would have sought a harsher punishment. Union Home Secretary RK Singh made a strong comment saying Headley and all those who were involved in the attacks should get the death penalty. Khurshid added that India would continue to watch the legal case around Headley carefully and would continue to press for his extradition to India, suggesting that with Headley’s sentencing, at least a beginning had been made.
Headley’s lighter sentence came from a 2010 deal that Headley ~ referred to as a former small time “drug dealer and US Drug Enforcement Administration informant, terrorist and Pakistani spy”, who led a “globetrotting” life “full of deception and manipulation” ~ made with US authorities sometime after his 2009 arrest. With the plea bargain, Headley agreed to plead guilty to twelve counts. In exchange for his cooperation as a key witness and providing information on his handlers and operations of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, he would avoid a death sentence and extradition to India. Accordingly, US prosecutors sought a lighter sentence of 30 to 35 years in jail.
The BJP’s Rajiv Pratap Rudy commented that the lighter sentence against Headley would account for the six American lives lost in the Mumbai terror attacks where ten gunman armed with automatic weapons and grenades opened fire on multiple targets at CST Railway Station, Chabad House and the Taj Mahal Hotel but did not account for the many Indian lives lost. Perhaps due to the emotions around the relatively lighter sentence, the US embassy issued a statement explaining the US decision as having been taken “because of Headley’s willingness to cooperate with law enforcement authorities ~ Americans, Indians and others ~ to help bring the perpetrators to justice and prevent other terrorist attacks.”
The statement listed what some see as some of the “positives” from the deal ~ information that will lead to convictions of six others named in the case. Washington has said it would continue to see that the others named in the case are brought to justice. Though the Indian government has said it would continue to press for Headley’s extradition/trial in India, reports suggest that for the moment the only access that Indian investigators will get to Headley is via video conferencing. Indian authorities are hoping to get Headley’s alleged accomplice Tahawwur Rana for questioning. Rana was handed down a 14-year sentence for backing a failed plot to take hostages at a Dannish newspaper in Copenhagen. The US court had acquitted Rana of any major involvement in the Mumbai attack.
Acting US Attorney Gary S Shapiro has said there may still be a chance for Headley’s extradition to India if he did not “adequately cooperate with authorities” because then the plea bargain would be void. But too many questions surround the manner in which all this has happened for India to be anywhere close to closure on 26/11.
