| Last updated at 10:47 PM on 19/11/09 |
Report says terror suspect Rana spent holidays in Ottawa 
The Canadian Press
TORONTO — The Pakistani-Canadian caught up in a major terrorism investigation in India and the United States spent holidays at his home near Ottawa, a report said Thursday.
The Globe and Mail said that businessman Tahawwur Hussain Rana, who was arrested by the FBI last month, co-owns the property in Kanata, a suburb of the capital. But it said only his father, brother Abbas and Abbas’s wife currently live there.
Rana and another Chicago resident, David Coleman Headley, were arrested on accusations of plotting an armed attack on a Danish newspaper for publishing cartoons in 2005 depicting the Prophet Muhammad, which ignited outrage in the Muslim world.
The FBI has since alleged that Rana, 48, and Headley, 49, were in contact with the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which the Indian government blames for last November’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai that left 166 dead and 308 wounded.
A bail hearing for Rana that was originally scheduled for Thursday was postponed until Dec. 2. Rana’s friends and relatives in Canada and the United States had apparently been prepared to post bail worth $1 million to secure his release at the hearing.
Rana immigrated to Canada from Pakistan in 1997 and obtained Canadian citizenship in June 2001.
The Globe said Abbas, who has been working for the Hill Times newspaper, was devastated by the news of his arrest.
“Abbas believes his brother is innocent, but he really has no idea,” Jim Creskey, the publisher of the newspaper, told the Globe.
Rana was charged with one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorism conspiracy that allegedly involved Headley and at least three other specific individuals in Pakistan.
Rana’s lawyer, Patrick Blegen, told The Canadian Press on Wednesday his client “adamantly denied” the allegations.
Media in India this week quoted intelligence sources as alleging Rana and Headley were suspected of being part of the terrorist team behind the horrific Mumbai attacks a year ago, and were part of a larger conspiracy that planned further attacks in the Asian country.
U.S. prosecutors have not laid any charges against Rana in connection with those allegations.
Blegen said he was aware of the reports, but declined comment on them Wednesday.
The FBI said Headley was in contact with Lashkar-e-Taiba while he allegedly planned and carried out reconnaissance this year near the Danish newspaper offices in Copenhagen.
Headley is a U.S. citizen who changed his name from Daood Gilani in 2006 to get across international boundaries without too many questions at customs, according to an FBI affidavit.
For now, the only firm association the FBI is alleging between the men and Lashkar-e-Taiba and other Pakistani terrorist organizations was related to the alleged plot against the Danish newspaper, although they say the men talked about possible attacks on other foreign targets.
According to court papers, Rana had a discussion with a someone affiliated with Lashkar-e-Taiba in late 2008 who was identified only as Individual B.
Federal officials also have set out an alleged chronology of communications between Headley and Pakistan-based groups that begins in December 2008, the month after the Mumbai attacks, and continues until just before his arrest. The FBI says Headley travelled to Pakistan this year and may have been headed there when he was arrested Oct. 3 at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport en route to Philadelphia.
According to an FBI affidavit, Headley admitted working with Lashkar-e-Taiba, knowing that it had been designated by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization, and with Ilyas Kashmiri, a leader of another Pakistan-based terrorist organization, Harakat-ul Jihad Islami.
Headley allegedly told the FBI that individuals supplied by Kashmiri were to carry out the attack on the newspaper under the plan. Kashmiri is described in a State Department report as a commander of terrorist forces in Kashmir and a former commander in the Afghan jihad.
U.S. prosecutors also have made it clear that they have intercepted numerous phone conversations and emails allegedly between Headley and a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, whom they have identified in court papers as Individual A. The two men allegedly talked of the planned attack in Denmark, which they called “the Mickey Mouse Project” and “the Northern Project,” according to court papers.
The papers also cite emails between Headley and another figure identified only as Lashkar-e-Taiba Member A.
In one communication, the court papers say, Lashkar-e-Taiba Member A told Headley he had “new investment plans,” which investigators say referred to a terrorist attack other than the Danish one.
— With files from The Associated Press.
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