Indian team to visit US to quiz Headley

FBIA team of Indian intelligence officials will travel to the US next week to question David Coleman Headley who was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for his alleged links with the terror outfit Lashkar-e-Tayyeba.

The FBI believes that Lashkar " that was placing a high priority on using Headley to assist in planning a new attack in India" had someone called Rahul on its target list.

The team, comprising officials of the Intelligence Bureau and Research and Analysis Wing, will try and get information about the Laskhar plot, a home ministry official said.

Home Minister P Chidambaram said India was working with the FBI to follow up what needed to be done in India while the US agency was investigating what it needed to do at its end.

The FBI had shared with India documents, like the complaint and affidavit filed by it in the court, before they were made public.

Sources said the US has sought India's cooperation to corroborate the information provided by Headley, who was arrested by the FBI at the Chicago airport on October 3. He was to board a flight to Philadelphia, with Pakistan being the final destination.

Headley, 49, was also to visit to India for some time — two to four weeks — to execute Lashkar's plans, according to US investigators.

His original target was the Copenhagen office of a Danish newspaper that had carried a cartoon of Prophet Mohammad, creating a controversy in 2005, but the Lashkar had begun using him against India.

According to the FBI affidavit filed in a Chicago court, Headley was in close contact with Ilyas Kashmiri and several unidentified Lashkar leaders. Kashmiri is the operational chief of Pakistan- occupied Kashmir section of Harakat-ul Jihad Islami, a Pakistani-based terror outfit with links to al-Qaida.