I knew at once that my surveillance had finally borne fruit. Those ten men were doing what they were only because I had got them all the information. I had never met any of them when I was in Pakistan talking to my handlers, but I had heard of them being trained for a mission of utmost importance. They had undergone training for around six months, which is nowhere close to what is needed for a mission of this magnitude. This meant that the ten Pakistani attackers were actually not much better than rookies.
I watched in amazement as the Indian security agencies, which were so arrogant about their so-called elite security forces like Marcos and the NSG, made little headway against the ten poorly trained rookies. Sajid Mir had shown me photographs of these boys sometime ago, and any doubt that I might have had at the time about how effective they would be against Indian security dissipated completely as I watched them tear Mumbai apart.
I felt a surge of pride at our boys and at being the one who had made their mission possible. For a fleeting moment, I remembered the ten wristbands I had bought for them from the Siddhivinayak temple in Dadar, and knew that they were wearing them. It made me proud to see our boys put up a spirited fight against all those heavily armed and well-trained commandos. Surprisingly, the NSG took several hours to reach the Taj, and by that time our boys had already taken control of the hotel, causing maximum damage.
I said a silent prayer for those ten brave men, knowing that they would not make it out of Mumbai alive. But they had done well and would get their due in heaven.
As I continued to watch the progress of the mission on TV channels, I started getting calls from my LeT masters and friends— Lakhvi, Hafiz Saeed, Sajid Mir and some others; the stream of calls put me on cloud nine. My wife Shazia too called me and congratulated me on my successful reconnaissance mission, which had made this attack possible. Of course, she used coded language, but I still understood what she was saying and felt very happy. All my callers told me that it was because of me that they had managed to successfully attack Mumbai. I was also told that I had found my way to heaven through this.
I was itching to do more such work and to get ajr, reward for my dead father, who had died in 2007. The success of the Mumbai attacks invigorated me and I decided that I would ensure that the Copenhagen attack became a success as well.
Pasha and I had kept in touch via email all this while. I had also communicated with him over the surveillance in Denmark. I met him again in December 2008, and a couple of times after that. During subsequent discussions, I asked him when we would be able to mount an attack on the Jyllands-Posten office. My friend Tahawwur Rana was present at this meeting when I told Pasha that I was fully ready to go ahead with the mission. Rana had also been present when I had returned from my first trip to Copenhagen, dismayed and frustrated, and he was visibly surprised to see the change that had been wrought in me since that time.
Early in January 2009, I consulted Rana on how to go about setting up a branch of First World Immigration in Copenhagen. I asked him if I would need any documents and what I would need to tell any officials who might question me, so as to not arouse any suspicion. Rana told me that the most important thing was to be utterly confident of myself—that was half the battle won. He also gave me a lot of details about the nitty-gritty of his business and told me that it was important that I portray the First World Immigration business as a very successful one. This, he told me, would automatically allay any fears.
Rana also got some business cards designed for me. These mentioned that I was his partner in the immigration business. The designation on the cards was a mouthful—I was apparently an Immigration Consultant from the Immigration Law Centre for First World Immigration. I was impressed at the ease with which I could take on a new identity, and again felt a surge of excitement. Yes, the Copenhagen operation would be a success.
In January 2009, I made my second trip to Copenhagen. I landed up at the office of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper on 20 January, with the same intention as on the last occasion—to place another advertisement in the newspaper. I also made sure to give out several of my business cards to people in the office, and they appeared very happy with the regular business that I seemed to be promising them once my office was set up in the city.
When I visited the office again on 23 January, I started filming in earnest. I used my camera to record the layout of the entire area in detail. I was trying to look at it in the light of all that had happened in Mumbai. I was trying to work out if a similar sort of attack could be carried out in Copenhagen.
But the more I inspected the office and the area, the more keenly I felt that my earlier misgivings had been correct. It would not be possible to replicate the brazenness of the Mumbai attack here. Copenhagen was structured very differently, the security setup was far more professional than the one in India, and to add to it all, the Jyllands-Posten office was centrally located in the city and consequently had a very good security arrangement. It would be impossible for even a trained team of jehadis to take this office by surprise.
Just as I had done before in Mumbai, when I reported every detail to Sajid Mir and Major Iqbal, I reported back on Copenhagen to Pasha in Pakistan through email. When I went back to Pakistan, I told Pasha that I believed our primary and only targets should be the newspaper’s editor and the cartoonist who had drawn the insulting cartoons of Prophet Muhammad. But Pasha disagreed. He said that everyone in that office needed to die. In fact, he said, all Danes deserved to be killed.
Pasha showed me a video that had been produced by the media wing of the Al Qaeda in August 2008. It claimed responsibility for an attack on the Danish embassy in Islamabad on 2 June 2008. it called for further attacks to avenge the publication of the caricatures of Prophet Muhammad, and pronounced, just as Pasha had done, that all Danes should be killed.
But we were far from the actual operation. After all, we had not even found anyone to sponsor the attack. When I asked Pasha what we would do, he smiled at me and said that all was well, and that there was someone who was more than willing to help us.
In February 2009, Pasha took me to Waziristan in the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) region to meet Ilyas Kashmiri, alias Doctor.
From the moment that I saw him, I was struck by Kashmiri’s appearance. He had a thick beard and wore dark sunglasses, which gave him a sinister look. He spoke with quiet authority, and I could tell that this man knew what he was doing. After all, he was high up in the hierarchy of the Al Qaeda!
He had heard about my contribution to the siege of Mumbai and congratulated me for its success, acknowledging that it had been my reconnaissance mission that had made it possible. We then showed him the videos that I had made of the Danish newspaper office and its surroundings. He seemed pleased with the reconnaissance, and I fancied that he was also satisfied at my abilities and that I was the one who had been selected to carry out this task.
Throughout the meeting, I remained thoroughly in awe of Ilyas Kashmiri. Also, for the first time, I realized that I was slowly climbing up the hierarchy. After dealing with the Lashkar, I had dealt with Pasha, one of the most highly placed men in Pakistan, and now, here I was hobnobbing with one of the top commanders of the Al Qaeda!
It was finally decided in March 2009 that the Lashkar would not go ahead with the attack on the Danish newspaper because they were under intense pressure from India in the aftermath of 26/11. It was now up to the Al Qaeda—only they and I could carry out the attack in Denmark.
In May 2009, Pasha and I met Kashmiri again. During this period, Pasha and I had gone over all the surveillance videos again and again, planning all kinds of invasions and attacks. When we met Kashmiri this time, he put me on to several of his European contacts. These people, he said, would give me all the money, weapons and manpower that I might need for the attack on the newspaper. I was left speechless. This was fabulous! Unlike the LeT, whose contacts and logistics were limited to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kashmir, the Al Qaeda had international contacts and r
each, and was clearly far more powerful than the LeT. Its operatives were deeply entrenched in European cities and were flush with money. They were also sympathetic to our cause and were willing to place me anywhere and help me in every possible way. However secure Copenhagen was, however foolproof its security, nothing can stand up to a brutal enough onslaught, and I had just been given the means for that.
I realized that Kashmiri had been very impressed by the Mumbai attacks and my role in them. He felt I could be given the authority to go ahead and plan the attack in Copenhagen in exactly the way that I wanted to.
I would not let him down, I promised myself. I would be successful, and earn laurels in such a way that I would be introduced, finally, to Amir Osama.
EIGHTEEN
‘So, you met Ilyas Kashmiri at least twice to discuss your Copenhagen operation?’ Behera asked.
Headley nodded. ‘More than once.’
There was a bit of confusion in my life at this time.
Despite the support of one of the top commanders of the Al Qaeda, who wished me to plan an attack on the Jyllands-Posten newspaper office, everyone else seemed to want me to carry out even more surveillance missions in India for future attacks across the country.
So, on the one hand, I had been given instructions to visit India and focus on Jewish targets and synagogues. At the same time, I was also asked to ferret out more information on the Mickey Mouse Project (MMP), also known as the Copenhagen project. Each of these two powerful factions wanted me to work for them— the LeT, which had trained me, and the Al Qaeda, with whose support I could really make a mark in the world.
In such a situation, I was not very clear about what to do. But I made a decision soon—I would work as much as I could for the LeT.
In one of the regular email correspondences with my Lashkar friends, I was told to move to ‘Rahul City’. I checked with them whether they were considering ‘investment plans’ or ‘business plans’ there. I was told that it would be more for real estate than business, meaning that more attacks were being planned and I had to scour for more targets.
Although I was gearing up for MMP after having already made two trips to Copenhagen, I decided to go to India again soon after I got these instructions.
I reached Mumbai in March 2009. I stayed at the same hotel in Churchgate, Hotel Outram. Keeping that as my base, I moved around the city. I had been instructed by my masters in Pakistan to record videos of every place in Mumbai that I thought could be a potential target, including synagogues, and also to visit Goa.
So I spent a few days locating possible attack sites and visiting synagogues across the city, starting from Byculla in central Mumbai and moving out to other places. Once I completed my work there, I decided to visit Goa.
When I landed in Goa, I saw that the entire place was teeming with foreigners. It would be a brilliant target, especially since we wanted to grab international eyeballs. But after the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, I had to be careful not to be recognized, even by accident. One never knows how far back any trail goes, and if the Indians tried hard enough, which they certainly were after 26/11, they might stumble onto me and what I was doing. In Goa too, I made sure not to stay in any one place for too long, fearing that I would be traced and found out as the man who had conducted all the reconnaissance and single-handedly helped the ten terrorists attack Mumbai. If I moved around enough, I knew that nobody would be able to trace me. During my two-day stay in Goa, I figured out all the joints that are frequented by foreigners and tourists.
During that trip to India, the final trip that I made to that country, I identified targets in Mumbai and Goa. This time, I made no contact with my friends in Mumbai, Vilas and Rahul. I couldn’t risk it. I put all the information and details, including the videos that I had made of the targets, in a report to give to my friends in Pakistan.
I was not contacted immediately after I reached Lahore. During the few days that I had to myself, I kept preparing the plan for the attack, all the while telling myself that I would soon be able to go back to the much bigger international target of the Danish newspaper office in Copenhagen.
In July 2009, I set out on another trip to Copenhagen. I was looking at it as a final surveillance trip to tie up any loose ends. The videos I would make during this visit would help us fine-tune the plan and decide how the attack on the city and the Danish newspaper could be carried out. Of course, this meant that the Rahul City project would be kept on hold for a later date, but I wasn’t complaining. Far from it.
Just like on my earlier visit to Mumbai, I made sure that I wasn’t in touch with anyone I had met in Copenhagen the previous time I was there. I did not meet any of the people from the newspaper, and made sure that I was not recognized as I wrapped up my surveillance of the office.
Then, one day, on 13 September 2009, all my plans for the future came crashing down. I got a call from Pasha, who told me that MMP might have to be put on hold. I was surprised, because even though I had been sent to India and told to focus on Indian targets, everyone had seemed very keen on the Copenhagen operation. I was filled with a dark sense of foreboding, and I asked Pasha why MMP was being postponed.
‘Doctor has got married, Daood,’ he told me.
I was shattered. Ilyas Kashmiri alias Doctor had been killed! Pasha was speaking in the code that we used to escape detection by security and intelligence agencies: that somebody had got married meant that he had died and gone to heaven. I later found out that Kashmiri had apparently been killed by US bombs.
But I was determined to go on fighting for the cause of jehad. I told Pasha that I was ready to go ahead with MMP. ‘If this amal (good deed) is maqbool (acceptable) and I get ajr (religious reward) for it, I want my father to get that ajr,’ I told him.
But Pasha replied, ‘There is nothing we can do, Daood, at least not for the moment.’ He then told me to ‘collect my unemployment from the company’, meaning I would have to temporarily set aside the mission. After Doctor’s ‘marriage’, I was in a fix and could see no way of going forward, as I didn’t even know if his contacts in Europe would agree to fund and help me.
Maybe Pasha sensed that I had taken Doctor’s death hard. He tried to cheer me up by saying that it was actually a small loss, and that perhaps some other doctor would ‘take over the treatment’. However, I replied, ‘No. Doctor’s marriage is a major loss.’
After this, I spent several days contemplating what would happen. No one contacted me in those days, and I was again left to wonder what to do and whether we would continue to carry out the Rahul City project, or would have to think of some other project and contact other sponsors.
But Allah was kind. On 21 September 2009, when I had almost despaired of finding any other mission or even sponsors, I got a call from Pasha. The moment I heard his excited voice, I knew he had good news for me.
‘There are many reports coming in, Daood. By the grace of God, it seems that Doctor is well!’ Pasha said.
It was the best news I had received in a very long time and I could scarcely believe my ears. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked, elated.
Pasha said, ‘Yes, he is well, he’s good. Inshallah, he will come back to the hospital very soon.’ So Ilyas Kasmiri was not dead after all, and we could pick up the Copenhagen operation from where we had left off.
Delighted at the confirmation, I told Pasha, ‘Buddy, if this is true, I will say 100 rakats … 100 rakats!’ (A rakat can be considered to be a unit of namaz.)
After this, life took a turn for the better. I spent my days figuring out how we would mount the attack on Jyllands-Posten. I was waiting for fresh instructions to visit Copenhagen again and resume the project. And with Doctor being alive and well, the instructions came very soon. Pasha called me to confirm that an attack strategy had been planned, and it had been developed with major assistance from my videos.
It was decided that the attack would be carried out sometime in October that year. I worked on a plan over the next couple of months
, so that when I met Doctor and Pasha, I would have a strategy in place, to attack the city and the newspaper office.
I felt a subtle change in me as I geared up for the mission. Perhaps because I was now working with the Al Qaeda, who are far more professional than the LeT in terms of their logistics, their funding and their contacts in Europe and the US, I felt more confident. I told myself that Allah was with me, and that I would make a grand success of this mission. It would create a sensation and bring the entire world to its knees. I knew that this time I would not be a mere scout working for the cause of jehad. My role would be far bigger than it had been in the lead-up to 26/11.
NINETEEN
Life is strange, and often unfathomable.
Except for a brief period, when we shared a wonderful rapport during the film shooting in Spiti, my father had been my enemy number one. As far back as I can remember, in the twenty-five years of my life, he was the villain while I was the wronged hero. Just like in the movies, I was the protagonist and my father the antagonist.
But I say that life is strange because despite this, I got a chance to see Mr Mahesh Bhatt in a different light. The recent crisis in my life, thanks to David Headley, gave me a totally different perspective on my childhood and growing-up years. I had heard the age-old saying that blood is thicker than water, but I didn’t believe it for as long as I knew David, my David, the good David, not Daood Gilani, the terrorist. But I guess that’s the thing about age-old sayings: there’s always a grain of truth in them.
After it became clear that I had been cheated and used by David, I spent a long time in an emotional cesspit, feeling depressed and abandoned. But then, as I reflected on the past, certain things started coming back to me, and I realized that all said and done, Mr Mahesh Bhatt had been my saviour on more than one occasion. In fact, he had come to my rescue several times, when I was in trouble or had been wronged. I had just failed to see this in time.