Washington: Fresh details have emerged about
David Headley, arrested by FBI for plotting attacks in India,
with the media here reporting that the US terror suspect was
born to a Pakistani diplomat father and an American mother.
At the age of 16, Headley, who was born Daood Gilani, was
taken out of Pakistan, where he attended a military school,
and brought to Philadelphia by his mother who had split with
her husband by then and opened a popular pub-cum-nightspot.
A report in the Philadelphia Inquirer today has brought
out unknown facets of the life of the 49-year-old, who along
with Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Rana, allegedly planned
attacks in India and Denmark at the behest of Lashker-e-Toiba.
They are also suspected to have carried out recce of the
deadly 26/11 attack sites in Mumbai.
According to the paper, David's mother Serrill Headley
was founder of the Khyber Pass pub-restaurant in Philadelphia.
After splitting with her husband, a "prominent Pakistani
diplomat", she lost child custody in Pakistani courts.
After two attempts to get her son out of Pakistan failed,
she finally succeeded in 1977.
In Philadelphia, however, Headley suffered from "culture
shock". Raised as a Muslim, he was having trouble adjusting to
the idea that his mother ran a bar, the report said.
"He has never been alone with, much less had a date with,
a girl, except the servant girls of his household," it said.
He changed his name to Headley in 2006 "to raise less
suspicion when he travelled".
The report said the Khyber was a slice of exotica on the
Philadelphia bar scene, with Pakistani wedding tents and 180
brands of beer. Eventually, Serrill turned it over to her son.
"His mother owned it and gave it to him around 1985,"
said Stephen Simons, current owner of the bar, now called the
Khyber. "He ran it for about a year and ran it into the
ground," Simons said. Simons' brother bought the bar in 1988.
David Headley studied accounting, possibly at a community
college in the Philadelphia region. With his mother, he
operated a video store, FliksVideo, in Center City.
Serrill Headley died in 2008. Her second husband, Dick
Pothier, was an Inquirer reporter. He also died in 1995.
In 1997, Headley, under his birth name of Gilani, was
convicted on federal charges in Brooklyn of smuggling heroin
into the country. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison, the
report said.
Headley had been living in the north side of Chicago,
authorities said, in an apartment under the name of a dead
man. Although he has claimed to be a consultant in an
immigrations business, federal agents who have had him under
surveillance found no evidence that was true.
Bureau Report
First Published: Thursday, November 19, 2009, 21:49