Author: Bill Gillespie
Publication: Cbc.ca
Date: June 5, 2011
URL: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/06/05/f-gillespie-terror-trial.html
Defence to begin presenting Rana's case this
week
Tahawwur Rana is a 50-year-old Canadian businessman
in a heap of trouble.
For the past three weeks, Rana has been on
trial in a Chicago courtroom charged with several counts of providing material
support for terrorism.
U.S. federal prosecutors have presented extensive
wiretap and surveillance evidence they allege connects Rana to both the 2008
Mumbai attacks and a plot to murder journalists at Denmark's Jyllands-Posten
newspaper. The Danish paper enraged some Muslims by publishing controversial
cartoons of the prophet Mohammed.
In the coming days, his American lawyers,
Patrick Blegan and Charlie Smith, will begin to mount a defence. But Rana's
personal fate is being overshadowed by sensational evidence that threatens
to poison Washington's already troubled relationship with its erstwhile ally
Pakistan even further - evidence that appears to show that despite repeated
denials, the Pakistani military is secretly training and financing militant
groups.
The prosecution's star witness is David Headley
Coleman, who, before legally changing his name, was Daood Sayed Gilani.
Coleman and Rana met in their teens while
attending the Hasan Abdal Cadet College in Pakistan's Punjab province.
Rana emigrated to Canada from Pakistan in
1997. He owns a house near Ottawa now occupied by his father, brother and
sister-in-law.
Rana moved to Chicago 10 years ago, shortly
after obtaining his Canadian citizenship in order to expand the reach of his
immigration consultancy business, First World Immigration. That's where he
re-connected with Headley.
In exchange for a plea bargain sparing him
from the death penalty, Headley agreed to testify against Rana. Headley admits
he is a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based group that perpetrated
the 2008 Mumbai massacre, which killed 160 people, including two Canadians.
Headley alleges that, with Rana's complicity,
he travelled to Mumbai several times posing as a representative of First World
Immigration in order to do first-hand surveillance of the Taj Mahal Hotel
and other possible targets. Rana's lawyers will argue their client was duped
by his friend Headley.
The most sensational testimony by Headley
so far is that the Mumbai attacks were bankrolled and directed by Pakistan's
military intelligence agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI). Headley has testified he learned surveillance and intelligence techniques
at training camps run by ISI agents and saw Pakistani army officers giving
Lashkar fighters weapons training.
Regional players from Afghan Prime Minister
Hamid Karzai to the CIA to most frequently India have long complained that
Pakistan is playing a double game - pretending to help the U.S. fight the
Taliban, while in fact supporting the Taliban.
The Rana trail is the first time, however,
that an insider such as Headley has blown the whistle on the ISI in a credible
public forum.
The revelations are bound to intensify international
scrutiny of Pakistan's alleged sponsorship of extremist groups, and at first
blush, there seem to be many more members of Lashkar-e-Taiba hiding out in
plain site in Pakistan.
The Institute for Conflict Management, a New
Delhi-based think tank that keeps a daily record of terror incidents in South
Asia, alleges there are currently 43 separate terrorist groups active in Pakistan.
Some of them, like Lashkar-e-Taiba, are believed to benefit from varying degrees
of support from the Pakistani military and by extension, the government of
Pakistan itself.
Pakistan-U.S. relations took a blow in May
when, after years of listening to the Pakistani government claim ignorance
of Osama bin Laden's whereabouts, the U.S. tracked down and killed the al-Qaeda
leader less than a kilometre away from Pakistan's premier military academy.
The trial of Canadian citizen Tahawwur Rana
is worth watching to see what other surprises the situation in Pakistan might
have to offer up.
