Pakistani American charged in Mumbai attacks

A U.S. citizen of Pakistan origin has been charged with helping to plan last year’s attack on several Mumbai sites including the local Chabad center.

David Coleman Headley was charged on several counts, including six counts of conspiracy to bomb public places and to murder and maim, according to reports. The Justice Department complaint was unsealed Monday.

Headley, 49, who was arrested in October in Chicago as he tried to make his way to Pakistan via Philadelphia, allegedly posed as a Jew in order to enter the Mumbai Chabad center and prepare for last year’s attack for the Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is believed to be responsible for the attacks.

Indian investigators found that Headley visited all 10 Mumbai locations that were attacked last November.

When he was arrested, Headley had a book in his possession titled “To Pray as a Jew,” the Calcutta Telegraph reported.

Since his arrest, Headley has been cooperating with police, according to the New York Times. This has lead to new charges in the attacks.

Headley was born in Washington and raised in elite circles in Pakistan, where he attended a strict military high school, according to the New York Times. His parents, an American mother and a father who was the son of a former Pakistani diplomat, were divorced when he was young. His wife and children live in Chicago.

The newspaper reported that he changed his name in 2005 from his birth name, Daood Gilani, presumably in order to appear convincingly as an American and to make traveling easier.

Chabad Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah, were among the six victims killed at the Nariman House. A total of 179 people were killed in the Mumbai terror attacks, which occurred over a three-day period.