Ex-businessman facing murder charges in Mumbai terror attack

A former Chicago businessman imprisoned for aiding terrorist groups has been arrested in Los Angeles to face murder charges in India for the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks that killed more than 160 people, US prosecutors said.

Tahawwur Rana, a Pakistani-born Canadian, has been charged in India with conspiring to plot and carry out the deadly attacks that are sometimes referred to as India’s 9/11.

Rana, 59, was convicted of a terrorist charge connected to the group behind the Mumbai slayings, though US prosecutors failed to prove he directly supported the four-day rampage.

Rana was serving a 14-year sentence when he was granted early release from a Los Angeles federal prison last week because of poor health and a bout of coronavirus.

But he never got out of prison before being arrested to face extradition to India, prosecutors said.

He has been charged with murder and murder conspiracy in India, according to court documents.

Rana was convicted in Chicago in 2011 of providing material support to the Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which planned the India attack, and for supporting a never-carried-out plot to attack a Danish newspaper that printed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005.

Jurors cleared Rana of a more serious charge of providing support for the attacks in Mumbai, India’s largest city, that killed 166, injured nearly 240 and caused US$1.5bil (RM6.4bil) in damage.

Rana’s lawyer said at trial that he had been duped by his high school buddy, David Coleman Headley, an admitted terrorist who plotted the Mumbai attacks.

The defence called Headley, the government’s chief witness who testified to avoid the death penalty, a habitual liar and manipulator.

Rana was accused of allowing Headley to open a branch of his Chicago-based immigration law business in Mumbai as a cover story and travel as a representative of the company in Denmark.