On January 14, 2010, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) filed before Judge Harry D.Leinenweber of the Northern District Court of Eastern Illinois Division a charge-sheet (indictment) relating to the role of David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana of the Chicago cell of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) in the Mumbai terrorist strikes of 26/11 of 2008 and in a planned terrorist attack on the office of a Danish newspaper in Denmark, which had published cartoons of the Holy Prophet in 2005.
The charge sheet projected the Mumbai attacks as a joint operation of the LET and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) involving, among others, four members of the LET and Major (retd) Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed alias Pasha, who acted as an intermediary between Headley and Rana on the one side and the Waziristan-based Ilyas Kashmiri, the head of the 313 Brigade of the HUJI on the other.
The charge-sheet also referred to a “Person A”, a resident of Pakistan", "who participated in planning and funding attacks carried out by the LET." It did not describe him as a member of the LET. By going through the charge-sheet, one could infer that Person A was most probably Major (retd) Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed alias Pasha. It was he who allegedly gave US $ 25,000 to Headley in July 2006 for his expenses in India, another sum of US $ 2000 in Indian rupees in September 2007 and a third amount of US $ 1500 in Indian rupees in June 2008.
While no Pakistani resident was cited as a co-accused in connection with the Mumbai attacks, Ilyas Kashmiri and Major Abdur Rehman were cited as co-accused in connection with the planned terrorist attack on the Danish newspaper office. The FBI had thus reserved to itself the option of demanding that Pakistan should arrest and extradite them to the US for trial. According to the charge-sheet, the Denmark attack was also envisaged as a joint LET-HUJI (313 Brigade) operation, but the LET withdrew from it in March 2009 following the action taken against some of its members by the Pakistani authorities in connection with the Mumbai attacks. Thereafter, it was planned as a purely HUJI attack.
Earlier in February 2009, when Headley met Ilyas Kashmiri in Waziristan along with Maj Abdur Rehman, Ilyas Kashmiri informed him that he would arrange the manpower for the Denmark attack and that the participation of the LET was not necessary. ( Please see my article of January 15, 2010)
In the third week of April, 2010, the Dawn of Karachi reported that five American Muslims -- Umar Farooq, Waqar Hussain, Rami Zamzam,Ahmed Abdullah Mini and Amman Hassan Yammer-- who had been detained in Sargodha in the Punjab province in December 2009 on a charge of trying to establish contact with Al Qaeda had contacts with the HUJI and Saifullah. Pakistani police officers were quoted as saying that they had actually been recruited by Saifullah through the Internet.They have since been convicted and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.
While there had been instances since 2003 of the LET trying to set up sleeper cells in the US, this was the first time that the HUJI had come to notice for trying to set up a cell in the US. Concerned by this, the US authorities, who had till then refrained from declaring the HUJI as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation, moved to have it so declared.
On May 18, 2010, Mrs Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, issued two determinations ( Public Notices 7101 and 7102) declaring the HUJI as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended. These two determinations had the following effect: Firstly, the HUJI was declared as an FTO because it "committed or poses a significant risk of committing acts of terrorism that threaten the security of US nationals or the national security, foreign policy or economy of the US." Secondly, action was initiated in co-ordination with the US Department of Treasury to have the HUJI and its leading office-bearers declared as specially-designated global terrorists to make them ineligible for US visas and to facilitate the seizure of any assets they may have in US territory. Thirdly, action was initiated for similar declarations by the anti-terrorism committee of the UN Security Council under UNSC Resolution No.1373 passed immediately after the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US homeland.
On April 27, 2006, the US State Department had issued Executive Order 13224 designating the Jammat-ud-Dawa (JUD), the front organisation of the LET, as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation and blocking property and interests in property, of the JUD and another linked organzation, Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq, that are in the United States or the under the control of U.S. persons. Earlier, in December 2001, the US had designated the LET as a terrorist organisation, but its attempt to persuade the monitoring committee of the UN Security Council to similarly designate the LET could not succeed till May 2, 2005. During this period, Pakistan was a member of the monitoring committee, which monitors the implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution No.1373 against terrorism. All members of the UN Security Council are members of this monitoring committee, which acts on the basis of consensus. Only after Pakistan completed its term as a temporary member of the UNSC in March 2005 was action initiated against the LET by the committee of the UNSC. But, even after Pakistan completed its term in the UNSC in March 2005, no action could be taken against the JUD by the UNSC Committee because of China's support to the Pakistani stand that the JUD was a humanitarian organisation, that had nothing to do with the LET. Only after the Mumbai terrorist strikes of 26/11 did China, with the prior clearance of Pakistan , lift its objection to the declaration of the JUD too as a terrorist organisation, but the Government of Pakistan has not yet declared the JUD as a terrorist organisation under its national laws.