David Coleman Headley
Born to a Pakistani diplomat, Salim Gilani, and American Serrill Headley, Daood Gilani changed his name to David Coleman Headley in 2006, ?so as to raise less suspicion when he travelled,? according to the FBI dossier.
His mother lived in Pakistan for 10 years before separating from his father and moving back to Philadelphia where she set up a pub and restaurant called Khyber Pass. Serrill managed to get her son to the US from Pakistan in 1977 and a few years later, handed over the pub to him. The pub wound up soon after and later, David Headley was convicted for smuggling heroin ? he got 15 months.
Headley, now 49, studied accountancy at a community college in Philadelphia but it?s not clear if he ever worked as an accountant. He went around the world claiming to represent an immigration business but the FBI found that there was no such business.
FBI records show him as a fiercely motivated, well-organised man often impatient to act-even as his LeT handlers advised him patience.
Excerpts from his phone conversations that the FBI accessed: ?The main thing is, the business must go on? I don?t care if I am working for Microsoft or?GE or Philips, I don?t care. As long as I am making money, I don?t give a shit.? (The FBI deduced this to mean that he does not care whether he worked for Lashkar-e-Toiba or Harkat-ul-Jihad-Islami with which he was associated, as long as he could carry out attacks.)
l In another phone call, Headley tells the LeT handler that recruits for the attacks were unwilling to take risks, and ?have rotten guts?, adding ??such an investment will be risky as much is the chance of profits and at the same time there is chance of loss.?
Tahawwur Hussain Rana
Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 46, is a Pakistani who became a Canadian citizen but lived mostly in Chicago. Rana had gone to medical school and owned several businesses, including First World Immigration Services, which has offices in Chicago, New York and Canada, besides a farm in Illinois selling halal meat for Muslim customers, and a grocery store in Chicago. He had also attended a military school in the Pakistani town of Hasan Abdal.
Ilyas Kashmiri
Head of the 313 Brigade of the Harakat-ul-Jihad-Islami (HUJI), he is the man, FBI says, Headley had been reporting to while plotting attacks on Indian targets. In September 2009, Kashmiri was reported killed in a US drone attack in the Waziristan region of Pakistan. But he soon re-emerged to say he was alive and working with Al Qaeda. The FBI found from Headley?s mails and phone calls that he was virtually shattered by news of Kashmiri?s death. After the news turned out to be false, Headley decided to head for Pakistan and the FBI nabbed him at the airport.