
David Coleman Headley (30 June 1960-), born Daood Sayed Gilani, was a Pakistani-American Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist and one of the masterminds of the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Biography[]
Daood Sayed Gilani was born in Washington DC, United States on 30 June 1960 to a Pakistani diplomat and his American secretary. He was raised in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan, and he stood out for his light skin and his heterochromatic eyes. His mother was unable to adapt to Pakistani culture and returned to America, and Gilani was raised by his conservative and nationalist father. During the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, stray Indian bombs hit his school and killed 2 people, leaving Gilani with a lifelong hatred for India. In 1977, he decided to leave a contentious relationship with his Pakistani stepmother and live with his mother in Philadelphia (legally changing his name to "David Coleman Headley"), and he became a video rental businessman in New York City, a heroin user, and, eventually, a drug trafficker. In 1997, he was arrested in a DEA sting operation, but he agreed to become a confidential DEA informant. While imprisoned at Fort Dix, he became an increasingly devout Muslim, and he was released from prison early to take part in an arranged marriage in Lahore. There, he was introduced to Lashkar-e-Taiba, and he immersed himself in the group's ideology during his many trips to Pakistan and befriended the movement's spiritual leader, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed. While still working for the DEA, he also became an LeT fundraiser and recruiter; after 9/11, he was suspected of terrorism after his ex-girlfriend told the FBI that he had praised the al-Qaeda hijackers and repeatedly watched news coverage of the event, but he cited his work for the DEA as proof of his loyalty to the USA. He was deactivated as a DEA informant on 27 March 2002, and, that summer, as Headley went to an LeT training camp in Pakistan, his mother confided in her friends that her son had become a religious fanatic. In 2005, he was arrested in New York for hitting his wife at his video store, but he was never questioned, as the FBI deduced that his wife was angry at Headley for having another concurrent marriage. In 2006, Headley began working with ISI contacts in LeT to plot a terrorist attack on Mumbai, and he used his Western name to avoid suspicion as he took part in reconnaissance missions in Mumbai in 2007, scouting out targets for an attack and finding an ideal place for the terrorists to land. When the 2008 Mumbai attacks occurred in November 2008, Headley watched the attacks from his home in Lahore. At around the same time, he planned a terrorist attack on the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Denmark, but, after the plot was put on hold, Headley became disenchanted with the LeT leadership and became an underling of Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami leader Ilyas Kashmiri. In 2009, he visited an al-Qaeda cell in Derby, England, but his operatives Simon and Bash proved unwilling to carry out the Copenhagen attack. On 9 October 2009, he was arrested at the Chicago airport while trying to return to Pakistan with his surveillance footage from Denmark, and he gave up extensive information on his terrorist associations while under interrogation. On 24 January 2013, Headley was sentenced to 35 years in prison for planning the Mumbai attacks.