Let me tell you what tangential vindication of journalistic speculation based on a hunch tastes like. It does not at all taste good but I am going to tell you about it anyway. It tastes like boiled broccoli without salt.
On September 13, 2011, I wrote this in my blog:
“When Al Qaeda/Harkat ul Jihad al Islami leader Ilyas Kashmiri was killed for the second time* on June 3 this year during a drone strike on an orchard in South Waziristan, I had wondered whether Mumbai terror plotter David Coleman Headley’s may have helped the US with his coordinates.
My inference was drawn from the fact that Headley, now in prison awaiting sentencing for his role in the November, 2008 Mumbai terrorist strikes, was in regular contact with Kashmiri and may have provided significant actionable intelligence about his location to the US authorities.”
As educated surmising goes this was not bad at all. Here was my line of thinking: Since Headley was in contact with Kashmiri prior to his arrest and because after his arrest Headley wanted to prove to U.S. federal investigators how serious he was about his cooperation with them, he might have said things that helped track Kashmiri down.
Just how desperate Headley was to spill the beans became evident during his testimony. He proposed to the investigators that they should send him back to Pakistan with an ornate sword embedded with a locator chip which he could gift Kashmiri. The US then could use the signal from the chip to locate and target him. We will never know for sure whether he was sent back with such a sword. (I am being tongue-in-cheek.)
While a lot of what I had surmised and inferred may be disregarded, what probably carried some weight was my basic contention that Headley did indeed give enough intelligence on Kashmiri to track him down.
So yesterday when I received the U.S. government’s position paper on Headley’s sentencing, scheduled for January 24, I read it thoroughly. The paper, while describing the kind of extensive cooperation Headley offered, says, "Headley similarly provided extensive detail about Ilyas Kashmiri and his network."
I don’t know about you but I have chosen to treat that as tangential vindication of journalistic speculation based on a hunch.
On the broader question of the quantum of sentencing the prosecutors have asked the court to consider giving Headley between 30 and 35 years. For the 52-year-old Headley this duration would be effectively like serving life in prison, although technically it is below the life imprisonment.
India, which has a direct stake and interest in Headley, is likely to be displeased about the sentence but there is nothing much it can do about it. As the position paper notes, “Determining the appropriate sentence for David Headley requires consideration of uniquely aggravating and uniquely mitigating factors.”
The “uniquely aggravating” factors are obvious but not so well-known are the “uniquely mitigating” factors, which mainly relate to the extent of his cooperation. The prosecutors said he offered information about the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba including its organizational structure, leadership and other personnel, recruiting methods, fundraising methods, training methods, planning of attacks and potential targets.
What I find particularly interesting is the fact for two weeks before his arrest became public he volunteered to communicate with his associates at the instance of the investigators. Unaware of his arrest it is possible that Headley was able to lead the authorities to operatives of some value. “Through these communications, law enforcement was able to identify additional members of Kashmiri’s network and gain other valuable information,” the position paper said. All of these together constitute what the prosecutors call “uniquely mitigating factors.”
As an aside, I am curious to know how Headley communicated with his former associates in Pakistan and elsewhere and how he was monitored. For instance, did he speak to them in English or Punjabi/Urdu? Also, who monitored him to ensure that he was not, in fact, alerting the operatives using some coded language?
* I say second time because he was also reported to have been killed once earlier but it turned out to be inaccurate.