A Pakistan-born Canadian citizen wanted for his alleged role in the deadly 2008 Mumbai siege has landed in New Delhi after his extradition from the United States.
Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 64, arrived at a military airbase outside the Indian capital under heavily armed guard late on Thursday, and will be held in detention to face trial.
India accuses Rana of being a member of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group, designated by the United Nations as a terrorist organisation, and of helping to plot the attacks.
The National Investigation Agency said it “secured the successful extradition of … Mumbai terror attack mastermind Tahawwur Rana from the US”.
The extradition took “years of sustained and concerted efforts to bring the key conspirator behind the 2008 mayhem to justice”.
Donald Trump announced in February that Washington would extradite Rana, whom he called “one of the very evil people in the world”.
Rana was flown to India after the US supreme court this month rejected his bid to remain in the United States, where he was serving a sentence related to another LeT-linked attack.
New Delhi blamed the LeT group – as well as intelligence officials from New Delhi’s arch-enemy, Pakistan – for the 2008 Mumbai attacks wherein 10 Islamist gunmen carried out a multiday slaughter in the country’s financial capital, killing 166 people and injuring hundreds more.
India accuses Rana of helping his long-term friend, David Coleman Headley, who was sentenced by a US court in 2013 to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty to aiding LeT militants, including by scouting target locations in Mumbai.
Rana, who denies the charges, is accused of playing a smaller role than Headley, but India maintains he is one of the key plotters.
Rana “is accused of conspiring with David Coleman Headley, and operatives of designated [Pakistan-based] terrorist organisations LeT and Harkat-ul-Jihadi Islami … to carry out the devastating terror attacks,” the NIA said in the statement.
Rana, a former military medic who served in Pakistan’s army, emigrated to Canada in 1997, before moving to the United States and setting up businesses in Chicago, including a law firm and a slaughterhouse.
He was arrested by US police in 2009.
A US court in 2013 acquitted Rana of conspiracy to provide material support to the Mumbai attacks. But the same court convicted him of backing LeT to provide material support to a plot to commit murder in Denmark.
Rana was sentenced to 14 years for his involvement in a conspiracy to attack the offices of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which had published cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.
In February, Devendra Fadnavis, chief minister of Maharashtra state, which includes the megacity Mumbai, said that “finally, the long wait is over and justice will be done”.
