Tahawwur Rana, a Pakistani-origin Canadian sent to a United States Jail for his role in planning the 2008 Mumbai attacks, has been arrested after being freed from prison in order to face extradition to India.
Rana, 59, a close associate of David Coleman Headley, one of the main conspirators behind the attacks on India’s financial hub that killed 166 people, was serving a fourteen-year sentence in a Los Angeles federal prison when he was granted early release last week because of poor health & being infected by the COVID-19.
However, he never left the prison as he was arrested to face extradition to India, US prosecutors told The Associated Press. Indian officials said they learnt Rana was rearrested on June 10.
Officials familiar with developments said a United States attorney informed the District Judge in Los Angeles about India’s standing request for the extradition of Rana, wanted in India for terror charges. A senior National Investigation Agency (NIA) officer, who did not want to be named, said that “It’s a positive development after over 11 years. This means his extradition hearings will now take place.”
Ex-Home Secretary GK Pillai, who played a key role in the investigation of the Mumbai attacks & coordinated with the US, said there was a pending Indian extradition request for Rana.
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“There is a standing Indian extradition request for Rana & that will still be applicable,” he told the news agency. A person in the Govt, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the US authorities acted as there was a request for Rana’s preliminary arrest. The person noted that arrest signalled the start of the extradition process.
An NIA team that visited the US in late 2018 was informed by the department of justice it was convinced by India’s charges against Rana. Earlier, the “double jeopardy” clause in US law, according to which a person can’t be punished twice for the same crime, was hindering efforts to extradite Rana, but NIA made a fresh request in 2016 .
India levelled the charges of forgery & criminal breach of trust as Rana used his firm for making documents for Headley during his surveillance missions in Mumbai.
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These charges were accepted by US prosecutors & the FBI, & they are inclined to honour India’s request. FBI arrested Rana on Oct 18, 2009 for providing material support for the conspiracy to commit terrorist acts outside the US.
The Ex-Pakistan Army physician-turned-businessman was convicted in 2011 for providing material support to the Lashkar-e-Taiba for the Mumbai attacks, & for backing a planned attack on a Danish newspaper that printed caricatures of Prophet Mohammed in 2005. Headley was convicted during the same trial.
At the time, US reports had said American prosecutors had failed to prove Rana supported the Mumbai attacks & he was cleared of this more serious charge by the jury at the trial. His legal team claimed he had been misled by Headley, who was a friend from school. Rana had been accused of allowing Headley to open a branch of his Chicago-based immigration law firm in Mumbai to act as a front for his surveillance activities in Mumbai ahead of the attacks that also injured hundreds. He was accused of allowing Headley to pose as a representative of the same firm when he went to Denmark for surveillance ahead of the planned attack.
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At the time, US prosecutors had said Rana knew Headley had trained with the LeT & that Headley had shared information of his surveillance activities in Mumbai & of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, where LeT members later killed dozens of people.
Headley was sentenced to 35 years in prison but can’t be extradited to India under a plea deal.
Pakistani authorities had arrested seven men, including LeT operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, for the Mumbai attacks though their trial in an anti-terrorism court never made headway.
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Lakhvi was released on bail & his current whereabouts aren’t known.
In Mumbai, Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh said,“Rana’s role had come to the fore during Headley’s testimony after the latter admitted that he was working as an agent for him. We are discussing the developments at top level & the Govt will take a decision about Rana’s extradition. We will speak to the Centre in this respect,” he said.
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