This courtroom sketch shows Tahawwur Rana (foreground) who allegedly had advance knowledge of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, during a hearing in Chicago.
Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN Apr 12, 2011, 12.13pm IST
WASHINGTON: David Headley aka Daood Gilani and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, the two Pakistani expat foot soldiers who allegedly planned and conducted the Mumbai recce before the 26/11 terrorist carnage have implicated the Pakistani government and its intelligence agency ISI in the ghastly attack.
In court documents that have surfaced ahead of his upcoming trial in Chicago, Rana says his acts of providing material support to terrorists in the Mumbai attacks as alleged by US prosecutors ''were done at the behest of the Pakistani government and the ISI, not the Lashkar terrorist organization.'' The documents also cite Rana invoking his friend David Headley's Grand Jury testimony in which the latter too implicates ISI.
The startling disclosures, which forms part of Rana's defense, came even as ISI chief Shuja Pasha is visiting Washington DC with a laundry list of demands as the US tries to repair ties which have been severely damaged by the Raymond Davis episode. The US effort comes despite growing disquiet about ISI's role in fomenting terrorism. Still, the Obama administration is scrambling to control fallout from the court proceedings in an effort to save its ally from being publicly exposed as a state sponsor of terrorism.
The latest legal developments are not helping; in fact, they come at an embarrassing time for both sides.
The disclosure that Rana and Headley are implicating the Pakistani government and its intelligence agency in the Mumbai attack came about indirectly when an Illinois district court rejected Rana's attempt at what is known as a ''Public Authority Defense,'' in which the defendant essentially argues that he did something at the behest of a government or its official authority.
Proposing such a defense, Rana told the Illinois court that ''he acted pursuant to his actual or believed exercise of public authority on behalf of the government of Pakistan and the ISI.'' This defense, Rana argued audaciously, would give him immunity from criminal proceedings in United States courts under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act because ''the ISI has authority to act in India to protect Pakistan's national interests'' and he was acting at the behest of the ISI.
