Pakistan spy agency 'helped terrorists to plan Mumbai attack'

A US citizen convicted in the 2008 Mumbai attacks has claimed Pakistan's main spy agency was deeply involved in planning the strike, monitoring preparations and providing funding and advice to the attackers, according to an Indian government summary of his interrogation.

The report gives the strongest indication of the involvement of Pakistani authorities in the attack, which killed 166 people, paralysed India's business capital and froze peace efforts between Pakistan and India.

Under questioning by Indian officials, David Headley told how intertwined Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency was with the Lashkar-e-Taiba group accused of carrying out the attack, according to the report.

Headley, 50, from Chicago, was born Daood Gilani to a Pakistani father and an American mother. In March, he pleaded guilty in US federal court to laying the groundwork for the Mumbai attack as well as preparing for an attack in Denmark.

According to the report, Headley said the Pakistani spy agency provided individual handlers - many of them senior officers - for all the top members of Lashkar and gave them direction and money to carry out their reconnaissance of prospective targets.

The group's chief military commander, Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, was close to the director general of the spy agency, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the report states.

"According to Headley, every big action of LeT is done in close coordination with ISI," the report said, using a common abbreviation for Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The ISI has long been suspected of links to terror groups. The spy agency is thought to have nurtured Lashkar to attack Indian security forces in disputed Kashmir.

Western officials have accused the ISI of working with the Taleban to co-ordinate attacks on Nato forces in Afghanistan.

According to the report on the interrogation, Headley said the spy agency was having problems with militant groups in Pakistan, as fighters based in Kashmir were beginning to join Taleban groups fighting along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Launching a huge attack on India would prevent further defections from these groups by raising their morale and move the "theatre of violence" from Pakistan to India, the report said.

In Chicago where he is being held, Headley spoke to Indian investigators for 34 hours in June about the planning of the 60-hour siege attack by ten Pakistani militants of two luxury hotels, a Jewish centre and a busy train station.

Headley described a Lashkar-e-Taiba organisation filled with former Pakistani army officers and veterans from conflicts with India over Kashmir, the report said.

He met repeatedly with his own handler from the spy agency, identified as Major Iqbal, during preparations for the Mumbai attacks.

Maj Iqbal assigned Headley a trainer to drill him in intelligence basics, including how to cultivate sources and take cover, the report said.

Before Headley's first scouting trip to India in September 2006, Iqbal gave him $25,000. He later gave him a camera phone and showed him how to take surveillance videos.

Under a deal with prosecutors in the United States, Headley will not face execution if he continues to co-operate with their terrorism investigation.