In a world where extremist violence seems to lurk in every corner, in innocuous trips to the mall or the cinema, in the eyes of the stranger speaking in an unfamiliar tongue, it is but most natural to ask: what drives a person to commit an act of terrorism? Kaare Sørensen’s The Mind of a Terrorist: The Strange Case of David Headley attempts to answer this question with the central character being the mastermind of one of the most audacious acts of terrorism in recent years: the Mumbai attacks of November 2008.

It’s a gripping story, part biography, part thriller and proves that fact is stranger than fiction. Take even the fact of David Coleman Headley having one blue eye and one brown; given what we know about him now, this could almost be construed as a sly joke on nature’s part, for although it seems reasonable to assume that most terrorists have a hidden side, Headley lived a double life like no other.

The basic facts of the worst act of terrorism in India in over 20 years are well known. For nearly 60 hours, from the night of November 26 onwards, a group of 10 terrorists paralysed India’s commercial capital with a series of attacks targeting some of its most iconic landmarks including the Taj and Oberoi-Trident hotels, the Chhatrapati Shivaji train station and the Nariman House Jewish community centre. 166 people died and over 300 were injured.


An account of how one man instigated one of the most shocking terrorist attacks in recent history


Headley was a vital cog in that extended tableau of horrors. Sørensen establishes this from the start, in the opening lines of the preface: “Before a terror attack becomes an item on a breaking-news ticker or social media, before the first shot is fired, even before the attackers pack their weapons, you will find a guy like David Headley. He could be the person sitting next to you in the hotel lobby or at a bar in any major city in the world. And he would fit in.”

It is the very ordinariness of men such as Headley, their ability to blend in with their surroundings like chameleons that makes them so dangerous. Sørensen aptly describes him as “a creator of fear”. But the book does not only trace Headley’s thought processes and his evolution from a conflicted youth to a self-assured terrorist mastermind; it also gives a forensic account of the events he orchestrated and his meetings with others who followed a similar ‘career’ path.

These include notorious figures such as Ilyas Kashmiri, leader of the 313 Brigade and senior Al Qaeda operative as well as other, more shadowy characters such as Sajid Mir, a trainer of militants from Western countries, who played a crucial role in directing the Mumbai attacks.


It’s a gripping story, part biography, part thriller and proves that fact is stranger than fiction. Take even the fact of David Coleman Headley having one blue eye and one brown; given what we know about him now, this could almost be construed as a sly joke on nature’s part, for although it seems reasonable to assume that most terrorists have a hidden side, Headley lived a double life like no other.


Headley’s early years were volatile. The son of a Pakistani father and American mother, he was buffeted between the two cultures, particularly following the breakup of his parents’ marriage. At the age of 17, he moved to Philadelphia in the US to live with his mother. Within a few years, he was living the high life, partying, doing drugs, and smuggling heroin into the US from Pakistan. After getting caught in Frankfurt, he began to work as an informant for the country’s Drug Enforcement Authority (DEA) in a quid pro quo, passing on intelligence about heroin trafficking networks in Pakistan. It was only much later, at the age of 40, that he began to seek solace in the faith he had been exposed to as a child in his father’s home in Lahore.

If the account of events as narrated by Headley are to be believed, on a trip to Pakistan he made contact with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), one of several militant groups in this country that — although banned — was very active in the Kashmir ‘jihad’. After returning to the US, he began to recruit people for the organisation while continuing to work as a DEA informant, at least until 9/11 happened. He also officially changed his name to Daood Syed Gilani, the name he had been given at birth.

The Mind of a Terrorist lifts the veil on the opaque workings of a terrorist organisation by revealing how it trains militants and plans attacks. Headley’s fervent desire to fight in Kashmir was thwarted by LeT leader, Ziaur Rehman Lakhvi, who thought he was too old for the rigours of combat. “Lashkar needed a man who could travel freely in and out of Mumbai over a long period of time with a camera and notebook, and who had a way with people.” For the LeT, “Headley’s passport was worth its weight in gold”.

Headley “learnt to build a cover story, layer by layer. About the small articles of clothing that could increase the chances of people finding the cover story believable. He learned to surveil targets … to take safe paths and change clothes while en route so that guards and others wouldn’t realise he had passed by the same spot three or four times a day.”

Headley proved a good student. In fact, so convincing was he at switching from his traditional, devout persona in Pakistan to an urbane, Armani-wearing American in Mumbai, that he even managed to befriend a member of Shiv Sena, the right wing Hindu nationalist party — in other words, one of LeT’s ideological foes.

There is a stunning amount of detail in the book based on interrogation reports, secret audio recordings, electronic wiretaps of mobile phones in several countries including 284 calls during the Mumbai attacks, court transcripts from various trials, witness statements, etc, as well as over 300 emails and private letters written by Headley during 2008 and 2009. No wonder Sørensen describes it as “a reconstruction of real events”. The story spans not only India and Pakistan, but also the UK, the US, Sweden and Denmark. Most of the second half recounts Headley’s attempts at planning an attack — the Mickey Mouse project — on the Jyllands-Posten offices in Copenhagen to avenge the newspaper’s printing of controversial images of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). But while Headley was involved in selecting possible targets in Copenhagen, the US authorities with help from counterterrorism authorities in Europe, finally closed in on him.

So much evidence could easily have weighed the story down and Sørensen does make some gaffes here and there, but they are minor and more on account of lack of cultural familiarity with this part of the world than sloppy authorship. Also, the lengthy, impassioned emails from Headley to his friends expounding his views on religion could have done with some pruning.

On the whole, however, Sørensen weaves it all together deftly into a fast-paced, riveting story. The retelling of the Mumbai attacks, for instance, is fascinating in its minutiae. Extracts from wiretapped phone conversations between Mumbai and the control room in Karachi are used liberally and add to the sense of immediacy. One sample from these: “A short time later, the two spoke again. Sajid Mir [the terrorists’ handler in Karachi] was angry and spoke harshly. He wanted the hostages killed immediately. ‘Stand the women up in a doorway so that when the bullet goes through their heads it then goes outside, instead of ricocheting back into your room.’”

According to what Headley says, we also learn that LeT had promised the father of Ajmal Kasab — the only Mumbai attacker to be captured alive — that he would receive $1250 if Kasab was ‘martyred’. “‘We were all supposed to die. He said we would go to heaven’, cried Kasab … as he lay surrounded by the gruff [Indian] soldiers around his bed.”

Notwithstanding his grandiose ideas and lofty talk of principles, Headley proved to be a coward after his arrest. No nightingale could have sung as he did in order to secure himself a favourable deal at his trial. Today, as part of the FBI’s Witness Protection Programme, his whereabouts are unknown. All we are told is that “he is prisoner number 39828-066 in a top secret prison somewhere in the US”; his cooperation is described by the US authorities as “the most comprehensive ever provided by a top terrorist”. It is not often that one is privy to such material.

The reviewer is a Dawn member of staff.

The Mind of a Terrorist: The Strange Case of David Headley
(TERRORISM)
By Kaare Sørensen
(Translated by Cory Klingsporn)
Penguin Books, India
ISBN: 978-0143426820
368pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 23rd, 2016

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