TWO WIVES of an American man who helped plot the 2008 Mumbai attacks warned US officials about him but did not have enough specific information for the officials to act on, the US State Department said yesterday.
The New York Times reported on Saturday (October 16) that one wife of David Headley contacted US embassy officials in Islamabad in late 2007 to say she believed he was plotting an attack, while two years earlier another wife told investigators in New York she thought he was a member of a Pakistani militant group.
State department spokesman PJ Crowley yesterday confirmed that both women had sought to pass information, but said that while it was investigated it was not enough to warrant action such as a specific warning to the Indian government.
“There was concern expressed by both spouses. At the same time, the information was not specific,” Crowley told a news briefing.
“The fact is that, while we had information and concerns, it did not detail a time or place of the attack,” he said.
The Times reported that Headley was at one period married to three wives at once, including the two who spoke to authorities.
Crowley declined to discuss details of the information involved, and said the US and India had extensive cooperation on security matters both before and after the Mumbai attacks.
Headley pleaded guilty in March to a dozen US terrorism charges related to the Mumbai attacks in which 166 people were killed, and to a plot to attack a Danish newspaper that had published cartoons in 2005 that lampooned the Prophet Mohammed.
He admitted to scouting the targets for the Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and agreed to help investigators and give testimony against others in exchange for a promise that he would not be extradited to India, Pakistan or Denmark.
US authorities regularly receive tips about possible terrorism plots.
Headley, who spent his childhood in Pakistan and whose father was Pakistani, changed his name in 2005 from Daood Gilani to make travel through security easier. He was arrested about a year ago at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport as he was trying to leave for Pakistan.
The 2008 attacks in Mumbai, in which six Americans were among the dead, lasted for three days.
Crowley said the US would continue to press Pakistan to do more to crack down on militant groups, some of which are believed to have close ties to Pakistani intelligence agencies.
