Mumbai terror attack: Pakistan intelligence involved

At a trial, David Coleman Headley, the Chicago based Pakistani American who is accused of providing a front surveillance work in India in the 2008 Mumbai attacks has testified the involvement of at least one Pakistani Inter-Services intelligence directorate and a navy frogman, reported Reuters on Monday.

Headley, 50, had pleaded guilty last year of being a co-conspirator in the Mumbai attacks, in which 116 people, including 6 Americans were killed by 10 militants from the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

Headly said he was recruited by LeT and shuttled between India, Pakistan and US performing investigations and briefing his contacts to Tahawwur Rana, a Pakistani born Canadian citizen, also Headly's childhood friend. Tahawwur Rana has been charged with three counts of providing material support to LeT by assisting Headley. He also said that he was introduced to a retired Pakistani military officer at a mosque, and reported regularly to his LeT handlers and an ISI officer named Major Iqbal.

These groups operated under the umbrella of ISI ... they coordinated with ISI, Headley testified under questioning by prosecutor Daniel Collins, Reuters reported.

Rana, who is 50-year-old, is accused of using his immigration services firm in Chicago to provide a cover story for Headley's surveillance work and to be a means for communication with militants. This trial has come at a time when Pakistan's relation with US is at a dire state after the U.S raided Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's hide out at Islamabad.

U.S. prosecutor Sarah Streicker said that although Rana did not carry a gun or throw a grenade, he was complicit in the violence in India's financial capital, the report said.

Some Pakistanis, accused in the case but not in U.S. custody, knew about Rana and were appreciative of his assistance, she said in her opening statement to the jury in U.S. District Court in Chicago. At one point after the 2008 attack, Streicker said Rana told Headley, The Indians deserved it.