US authorities are keeping secret much of the evidence of alleged “Inter-Services Intelligence malfeasance” that may emerge from the Chicago trial of Pakistan-born businessman Tahawwur Hussain Rana and his associate David Headley which begins on May 16, The New York Times reported late Saturday. Any new evidence of the ISI role will reverberate in Washington too, with the relationship between the United States and Pakistan at its most tenuous state in years, the newspaper said.
As the United States presses Pakistan for answers about whether ISI directorate played a role in harbouring Osama bin Laden, David Headley is set to recount another related story in a federal courthouse in Chicago. What he discloses could further deepen suspicions that ISI operatives are connected to terrorists and potentially worsening relations between Washington and Islamabad. Headley himself is not on trial. But he will be the main witness against Rana, who is accused of providing financial and logistical support for the 2008 siege on Mumbai. The attack, a barrage of gunfire and grenades, killed at least 163 people, including six Americans. Rana’s defence is that he agreed to support Headley’s activities in India because he was led to believe he was working for the ISI, and therefore the Pakistan government.
An American official, cited by The New York Times, said that the US government’s view of Headley was murky. No agreement exists in Washington on whether the ISI guided Headley and the attacks on Mumbai.
“It’s not very clear,” the official said. “A lot of this is going to come out of the trial. His claim could just be his claim.”
Still, the very fact that the government is presenting him as a prosecution witness suggests that at least some believe he has a truthful story to tell. And the authorities said they expected the government to present supporting e-mails and tapes of telephone conversations to support his story. Pakistan denies his claims.
Bruce O Riedel, a terrorism expert at the Brookings Institution, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and a critic of the ISI, predicted that the upcoming trial would be “the next nail in the coffin of US-Pakistan relations as the ISI’s role in the murder of six Americans is revealed in graphic detail.”
Citing national security concerns, they have successfully moved to quash the defense lawyers’ subpoenas for State Department cables and records held by the FBI that discuss Pakistan’s links with militants.
And though the government has charged four other men on charges of aiding and abetting the murder of American citizens, including Major Iqbal, the indictment refers to them either as commanders or associates of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, not as having links to ISI.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 15th, 2011.
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