MEA: India trying to extradite 26/11 attack plotter Tahawwur Rana; hearing in April

Government of India is seeking to extradite Pakistan-born Canadian Tahawwur Rana, the mastermind plotter behind the 2008 Mumbai terror attack that claimed 160 innocent lives, India’s Ministry of External Affairs revealed Friday. The terror accused, living under the garb of a businessman in Chicago, was detained in Los Angeles in June last year, and was slapped with murder charges, and was imprisoned for aiding terrorists. The 59-year-old on the run was imprisoned after the Indian court charged him with conspiring to plot and carrying out the 26/11 attacks and for contributing to the deadly assault rampage in Mumbai with financial and logistical support in a "Pakistan-sponsored terrorism”.

“We are keeping a close watch on the extradition of Tahawwur Rana. We are trying for his extradition as soon as possible. In an update, his court hearing will begin on April 22, 2021," MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivastava told a weekly briefing.

India had sent a request to extradite the terrorist from the US, last year, following which, US court sentenced him to 14 years in jail. However, Rana was handed an early release after his public defender filed appeals, citing poor health and a bout of coronavirus. In 2011, the 26/11 plotter was convicted by Chicago police for supplying material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based terrorist group that claimed responsibility for series of brutal attacks and shooting in India’s commercial hub, Mumbai. The former was also accused of drafting a separate plot to attack a Danish newspaper for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005, which he could not execute, according to sources of the Associated Press. 

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[Pakistani police officers escort Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, center, the main suspect of the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008. Credit: AP]

Rana was charged for assisting Pakistani terrorists

Jurors in the US launched a probe against the terror plotter, in relation to incurring India $1.5 billion in damages with respect to lives and property. India declared Rana a fugitive, and the US District Court Judge in Los Angeles Jacqueline Chooljian, in a separate court filing had denied bail to the terror accused, dubbing him a ‘flight risk’. Prosecutors also feared that, if released, Rana would flee to Canada to evade the death sentence in India. Rana’s attorney, meanwhile, secured a USD 1.5 million bond for his release and proposed a robust bail package that would prohibit his client to board a flight, alleging that Rana was duped by his high school buddy, David Coleman Headley, who is an admitted terrorist in the Mumbai attacks. However, the prosecutors labelled Headley a chief ‘manipulator and a liar’ and charged Rana for assisting a terrorist in opening a Chicago-based immigration law business in Mumbai and travelling there in the guise of a representative of the company in Denmark.

Jurors noted that Hedley, born to a Pakistani father and American mother, bore deep-rooted hatred for India through childhood as he had watched the Indian military aircraft bombings during the India-Pakistan war in 1971. Following the Mumbai attacks, Hedley had told co-conspirator Rana that he was “even with the Indians now,” a court document cited by AP confirmed. 

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