During a bond hearing in a Chicago court in December 2009, Tahawwur Hussain Rana’s attorney Patrick Blegen portrayed his client as someone who was “duped” by David Coleman Headley, one of the key plotters of the November 26, 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks.

In fact, Blegen had even invoked Pakistan’s poet laureate Allama Iqbal to establish the “non-violent and decent” character of Rana. Three character witnesses were presented to the court of magistrate Judge Nan Nolan in US District Court in support of Blegen’s contention.

Belgen’s argument was that the image of Rana as presented by the US government was “inconsistent” with his client’s faith in Iqbal’s teachings. At one point, as those present in the court wondered who Iqbal was, Belgen said it was like saying that Mahatma Gandhi’s followers would be violent.

Nearly sixteen years and a 14-year-long incarceration in the U.S. later, Rana, a Canadian of Pakistani origin, is now in India after being extradited. He is in the custody of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) which for some curious reason described him as “the mastermind” of the 26/11 attacks. 

A behind-the-scene plotter

At best Rana, who is a medical doctor who once worked for the Pakistani Army, was one of the behind-the-scenes plotters who assisted his boyhood friend Headley by providing him legal cover to make several trips to India by opening up an immigration consultation service in Mumbai. Rana used to run a travel agency and immigration consultation service in Chicago’s Devon area known as “Little India.”

The NIA press release said it had “successfully secured the extradition of Tahawwur Hussain Rana, the mastermind of the deadly 26/11Mumbai terror attacks after years of sustained and concerted efforts to bring the key conspirator behind the 2008 mayhem to justice.”

Although both Headley and Rana shared animosity towards India, Headley far more so than Rana, it is a stretch to suggest that the latter was “the mastermind” of the Mumbai attacks which were directed by a combination of Pakistani intelligence operatives and members of the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and others based in that country.

What is remarkable about the news of Rana’s extradition is that its genesis has to do with a memorandum filed in 2009 in the Chicago court of U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber, the then high-profile United States Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald who had said that terror conspiracy suspect Rana remained detained pending trial because he had advance knowledge of the November 26, 2008 Mumbai attacks. Prosecutors had said Rana knew of the impending attacks days before they took place during a visit to Dubai where he was allegedly told about them by a retired Pakistani military officer named Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed.

Connection to Denmark terror plot

Rana was also alleged to have even congratulated the perpetrators of the attacks. That was for the first time that Rana, a Canadian of Pakistani origin resident in Chicago, was mentioned in connection with the Mumbai attacks. Until then he had been detained for his alleged role in plotting a revenge attack on a Danish newspaper cartoonist who caricatured the Prophet Mohammad as a terrorist.

But with the new memorandum the prosecution had then claimed that "Rana was told of the attacks before they happened and offered compliments and congratulations to those who carried them out afterwards."

Eventually, Rana was convicted for conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist plot in Denmark and providing material support to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, a terrorist organization operating in Pakistan that was responsible for the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India.  Rana was convicted of the charges on June 9, 2011, following a three-week trial in Chicago.

During the 2009 bond hearing, in contrast to Belgen’s argument, Assistant US Attorney Dan Collins had said the character witnesses did not know that there was a “whole other side” to Rana.

“He spent a significant amount of time with (David Coleman) Headley — a lot more time than the three witnesses who were put here today,” Collins said. “The word ‘target’ is that man’s word, it came out of his mouth,” Collins had said, pointing to Rana. His assertion was based on a recorded phone call.

Collins had repeatedly asked the witnesses if they would change their opinion of Rana being a non-violent and peaceful man if they were to find out that he spent time with someone who had connections and trained with the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, a “designated terrorist organization”. None of the three offered a direct answer but said they had to know all the facts even as they emphasized that the accused was a non-violent man.

Separately, the US Attorney’s office had then also maintained that Rana was aware of Headley’s alleged intentions to carry out reprisal against the Danish newspaper cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose caricature of the prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb as a turban, in the Jyllands-Posten in 2005 triggered worldwide rage among Muslims.

Rana was rearrested on an extradition request from India in June, 2020. His re-arrest in Los Angeles on June 10 that year had come after he was released early from his 14-year-long sentence on compassionate grounds after he said he had tested positive for the COVID 19 virus.

Rana went through appeals against his extradition right up to the US Supreme Court which on January 21 rejected it, ending his quest to avoid being handed over to India. An arrest warrant was issued against Rana in India by a special court of the National Investigation Agency in August 2018.

Rana escaped being convicted of involvement in the Mumbai attacks despite his childhood friendship and help to Headley, one of the main plotters of the ghastly attacks, who also lived in Chicago for a period of time. Headley is currently serving a 35-year sentence.

A legal victory for India

Rana’s extradition is a legal victory for India, but it is symbolic considering that he was only one of the plotters of the Mumbai attacks. Headley, who was often described as a double agent working as an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) at one point, was the man on the ground. For reasons which have remained a mystery he managed to strike a deal with the U.S. law enforcement under which both his extradition to India and potential death sentence were taken off the table in return for lifelong cooperation.

Rana’s presence and likely conviction in India are not expected to throw any dramatic new light on the Mumbai attacks beyond what the 2009 Chicago memorandum had mentioned.  As a peripheral player to the attacks any information he may provide to the NIA will necessarily be outdated but in so much as he represents in some manner Pakistan’s intelligence-terrorist nexus he is of symbolic value to New Delhi.

(The writer is a Chicago-based journalist, author and commentator. Views expressed are personal. He can be reached at mcsix@outlook.com)