Tahawwur Rana Extradition & Double-faced US Stand on Terrorism
US ambassador Eric Garcetti at 26/11 Memorial Image credit US Embassy in India
Slow Wheel of Justice in US Moves 17 yrs After Mumbai Terror Attack
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, January 25: Seventeen years after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, the US Supreme Court finally cleared the extradition of the key mastermind Tahawwur Rana. The apex court declined his appeal against the lower court order for extradition to India.
The Supreme Court ruled that certiorari (review) is denied. Rana is accused to be a key associate of Pakistani origin American national David Coleman Headley. Rana is a Canadian national of Pakistani origin.
The most audacious terror attacks in Mumbai on November 26 in 2008 had left 175 people dead. Al-Qaeda on instructions of the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI had sent a 10-member terror squad through the sea route to Mumbai. A New York Times report had quoted unnamed US officials confirming that the Pakistani State had been involved in launching the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.
But the US is yet to extradite Headley to India. The Ministry of Home Affairs in a written reply to the Lok Sabha had informed that an extradition request for Headley had been sent to the US on December 7, 2012 by the Government of India.
In a curious fast-faced conviction of Headley to seemingly shield him from extradition to India, the terror mastermind was convicted for terrorism and sentenced to 35 years in prison within a month of India’s request for his extradition.
“On January 24, 2013, Headley was sentenced to 35 years in prison followed by five years of supervised release, by the USA Court for 12 terrorism crimes relating to his role in planning the November, 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai. No official confirmation for the rejection of the extradition request has been received yet,” the Ministry of Home Affairs informed the Lok Sabha.
It stated that “India’s demand for the extradition of Headley continues to stand”. But the US has not moved an inch to accede to India’s demand for the extradition of Headley. Security analysts argue that Headley’s interrogation in India can reveal the roles of the foreign intelligence sleuths in Pakistan while they partook the subversive activities of the ISI.
Sebastian Rotella wrote for PBS in 2013: “Headley represents another potential stream of intelligence that could have made a difference before Mumbai. He was a Pakistani-American son of privilege who became a heroin addict, drug smuggler and DEA informant, then an Islamic terrorist and Pakistani spy, and finally, a prize witness for U.S. prosecutors.”
Iqbal Chand Malhotra in his recent book The Nukes, the Jihad, the Hawalas, and Crystal Meth has given extensive accounts of the Pakistani Army embarking on trafficking of illicit drugs to fund the nuclear missile programme after the US sought its dismantling.
Rotella quoted documents to state that the UK intelligence sleuths had already been tracking communication of LeT operators who staged the Mumbai terror attacks while the 10 terrorists had been trained in Muzaffarabad in the Pakistani Occupied Kashmir (PoK) under the watch of Pakistan’s ISI.
While Rana’s extradition is now cleared, the US holds on to Headley, possibly to stop India accessing the full truth behind the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. Pakistan experts have documented the involvement of the US intelligence sleuths in partaking the ISI activities to for gains in Afghanistan against Al-Qaeda after the 9/11 Twin Tower terror attacks.
Rana is currently jailed in Los Angeles’ Metropolitan jail while he lost appeals in federal courts before eventual Supreme Court rejection of his petition. The Americans have maintained silence over Headley’s extradition while they gave television bytes that the Supreme Court never overturns extradition rulings of the lower courts.
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