Pakistani-origin American David Coleman Headley, charged by FBI of being involved in the Mumbai terror attacks, was using US as a base to plan future attacks outside the country, a top Senator said today.
"I understand he was able to use the US as a base of (terror) operations," Senator Joe Lieberman, Chairman of the Senate Homeland and Security and Governmental Affairs who has received a classified briefing on the issue, said at a Congressional hearing.
"In the briefings that I've had on this without revealing anything classified, it seems I gather that he was not involved in any plots related to targets in the US, although one wonders whether that would have been the case for an extended period of time, but that he was using us as a base from which to plan attacks outside of the US," he said.
Senator Lieberman termed it as a "very troubling" case of Headley, who has been charged with six counts of conspiracy to bomb public places in India, murder and maim persons in India and Denmark, support the foreign terrorist plots and support Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and six counts of aiding and abetting murder of US citizens in India.
"Now as you know he's alleged to have made five trips from Chicago where he was living to Mumbai from 2006 to 2008 to conduct pre-attack planning and surveillance really to many of the targets that were struck in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks," he said.
