(David Coleman Headley) Chicago Trial May Unmask Pakistan’s Links to Militants

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WASHINGTON — Two years before terrorists struck the Indian port city of Mumbai, a Pakistani-American man named David Coleman Headley began laying the groundwork for the attack, financed, he claims, by $25,000 from an officer in Pakistan’s powerful intelligence service.

Mr. Headley told Indian investigators that the officer, known only as Maj. Iqbal, “listened to my entire plan to attack India.” Another ISI officer, Mr. Headley said, “assured me of the financial help.”

As the United States presses Pakistan for answers about whether the its intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, played a role in harboring Osama bin Laden, Mr. Headley is set to recount that story in a federal courthouse in Chicago. What he discloses could further deepen suspicions that Pakistani spies are connected to terrorists and potentially worsening relations between Washington and Islamabad.

India, the site of the November 2008 attacks, will be closely monitoring the trial for evidence of the ISI’s duplicity. Pakistan will also be listening to — and likely denying — Mr. Headley’s every word. So far, Islamabad has dismissed Mr. Headley’s accusations against the ISI as little more than a desperate performance by a man hoping to avoid the death penalty.

Full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/world/asia/15headley.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all