Chicago, May 25 : "I was pleased to watch Mumbai carnage on TV", this was the response of Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley when asked by the prosecutor on the second day of the Mumbai terror attack trial in the Chicago on how he felt about the siege in which 166 persons were killed.
Headley, a co-accused who has pleaded guilty, said he was watching TV from his home in Lahore during the 60-hour siege of Mumbai that began on the night of November 26, 2008.
Headley, who returned the US in December 2008, also said that his Lashkar-e-Tayiba handler Sajid Mir sent him an SMS asking him watch the 26/11 attacks on television.
Headley also stated that his alleged ISI handler Major Iqbal wanted to include Mumbai international airport in the list of targets in the 2008 terror attack.
David Coleman Headley returned to the stand on Tuesday to continue his outline of how he and members of the Pakistani-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba planned the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai that killed some 170 people.
By the end of the morning questioning by Assistant U.S. Atty. Daniel Collins, Headley had taken the jury right up to the Nov. 26 attack, which he said he watched unfold from Lahore, Pakistan, after one of the alleged conspirators texted him to turn his television on.
"I was pleased," Headley said without emotion when Collins asked his reaction to what he saw happening in Mumbai.
Such has been Headley's demeanor during most of his testimony over the past day and a half, even when he testified about the Mumbai rampage, one of the most deadly recent terrorist attacks, and a second, chilling plot to storm a Danish newspaper office and attack staff because of its publication of unflattering cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
While discussing that plot to target a Danish newspaper, Headley told Collins that he had argued with another alleged planner that only the cartoonist and one editor should be targeted. But his cohort disagreed, and when Collins asked why, Headley said simply:
"He said all Danes are responsible for this," said Headley, who has pleaded guilty to acting as a scout for Lashkar operatives in both the Mumbai and Danish plots.
Peppered throughout his testimony on his second day on the stand today as a prosecution witness were references to the reason Headley is there anyway: Explaining the role Tahawwur Rana allegedly played in supporting the attacks.
Rana, a Chicago businessman and former doctor for the Pakistani military, is on trial in federal court in Chicago on charges he provided support to Headley, his friend since childhood.
Rana, who owned a Chicago immigration business, helped Headley obtain a visa and allowed him to open a Mumbai-based office that gave Headley cover for the scouting missions that Lashkar handlers had assigned to him, Headley testified.
Rana has denied all involvement in the plots, and his attorneys argue he was tricked by Headley.
Headley had already testified Monday that Rana knew what he was up to and why he needed the cover of his immigration business to get in and out of India.
On Tuesday, he told the jury that in May 2008 — five months before the attack in Mumbai — he told Rana exactly how the plans had developed.
"I told him of my meetings, that I had been asked to look for landing sites around Mumbai," Headley said of the planned amphibious assault. Headley said he hold Rana "how I thought the plan would move ahead."
Headley later testified that Rana shared his anti-Indian beliefs — seeming at times to go out of his way to make sure the jury heard that by amplifying answers to Collins' questions.
Rana had very little reaction, even when Headley described the conversation the two old friends held in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.
"Dr. Rana said they deserved it," Headley said.
With that, Rana sat up a little straighter and blinked.
