A Chicago businessman was charged on Thursday with helping an old friend from military school in Pakistan plot the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, officials said.
Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 49, has been held in jail since his October arrest on charges of helping plot an attack on the Danish newspaper that published incendiary cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in 2005.
Prosecutors allege that Rana helped his friend David Coleman Headley, a key suspect in the Mumbai attacks, by allowing him to use his immigration company as a cover for surveillance trips to India and Denmark.
Rana was charged on Thursday with three separate counts of providing material support for terrorism in the Mumbai attacks, the Denmark terror plot and to the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Also indicted on conspiracy charges related to the Denmark plot were Ilyas Kashmiri, an alleged terror kingpin in Pakistan who prosecutors accuse of being in regular contact with al-Qaeda leaders, and Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, a retired major in the Pakistani military. Neither man is in US custody.
Headley, 49, has pleaded not guilty to 12 terrorism-related charges and remains in custody, where he is cooperating with prosecutors.
The Washington-born son of a former Pakistani diplomat and US mother, Headley reportedly befriended Bollywood stars and even dated an actress during his lengthy surveillance trips to Mumbai.
The indictment alleges that Rana acted as a messenger while Headley scoped out the Mumbai terror targets, taking photos and video and entering their positions on a GPS device.
Nearly a year after the bloody 60-hour siege, which began on Nov. 26, 2008, Headley was allegedly recorded discussing five future targets with Rana.
Prosecutors said the targets included: Bollywood; the Indian temple Somnath; the National Defense College in Delhi; Shiv Sena, a political party in India with roots in Hindu nationalism; and the Danish newspaper.
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