David Headley: US says shared all info with India

United States said it has always shared all information on possible terror attacks with India on a real time basis, reacting to a question by an Indian media on why the specific details of Mumbai attack plotter David Coleman Headley were not shared with India.

US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake told NDTV in an interview aired on Friday: “I would want to reassure all of your viewers that whenever we had any specific information on any chance of attack wherever in the world, particulary against our friends like India, we shared that information on a real time basis right away.”

Blake was responding to a question on Indian foreign minister S M Krishna’s earlier remark that India was not informed about Headley specifically prior to the Nov 2008 Mumbai attack, known as 26/11.

Headley is facing a trial in US court now on his terror links.

Media reports in USA said David Headley’s terror connections were reported to the US federal investigating agency FBI and other officials by his two wives at various times ahead of the Nov 2008 attacks in Mumbai that killed 166 people and injured many.

Blake said USA attached so much importance to its relationship with India that nothing was kept away from their “friend”.

“We are working very, very cooperately, none of it is visible to public of course because it is highly sensitive,” said Blake, who is visiting India ahead of Obama visit to finalize the agenda.

“Whenever, we had any kind of specific information, we immediately made it a practice to share it with India,” he reiterated.

US media reports earlier said Headley’s terror links were reported by his wife to the FBI in 2005 by his wife while a New York Times story said the terrorist’s second wife, a Moroccan, too had warned the US authorities in Pakistan less than a year before the deadly strikes in 2008.

The newspaper said a young Moroccan woman went to American authorities in Pakistan to warn them that she believed her husband, David C. Headley, was plotting an attack.

According to the newspaper, it was not the first time American law enforcement authorities were warned about Headley who was an informer in Pakistan for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.

The report by non-profit journalism group ProPublica Saturday said the FBI was told by Headley’s another wife that he was an active militant in the Lashkar-i-Taiba group. She had warned the FBI way back in 2005, three years before the terror strikes in India’s financial capital that killed 166 people.

ProPublica journalist Sebastian Rotella said the federal agents in New York City had investigated a tip that an American businessman was training in Pakistan with the group that later executed the attack, following an arrest of Headley in a domestic dispute after his wife lodged a police complaint.