PAKISTAN government's spy agency was involved in planning the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, a US court has heard.
David Coleman Headley, a US-Pakistani who has already pleaded guilty to helping plan the massacre, told a Chicago court Pakistan's notorious Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) supported the Kashmir-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba and ''co-ordinated'' with the banned militants in the lead-up to the attacks in India's largest city.
Headley's evidence compounds the embarrassment for Pakistan's military over a massive security failure on Sunday night when more than a dozen Taliban militants stormed a naval base in Karachi, killing 10 security personnel.
In November 2008, militants stormed Mumbai by boat, launching at least 10 co-ordinated attacks. They laid siege to the city for more than 60 hours, killing 166 people.
Headley was giving evidence in the trial of his childhood friend Tahawwur Rana, who is accused of helping him conduct surveillance ahead of the attacks, as well as aiding a plot to bomb a Danish newspaper for publishing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.
Rana has pleaded not guilty. Headley agreed to testify in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty.
Headley joined Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2001 and was taught hand-to-hand combat at training camps. He told the court Lashkar-e-Taiba and ISI regularly ''co-ordinated''. He said a ''navy frogman'' from Pakistan attended a planning meeting for the Mumbai attacks and he identified a co-defendant previously only known as ''Major Iqbal'' as a member of ISI.
''They co-ordinated with each other. The ISI provided assistance to Lashkar … financial and military,'' Headley said.
The possibility of ISI's involvement in the Mumbai attacks was raised in diplomatic cables sent from the US embassy shortly after the attac [...]
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