The Mind of a Terrorist Read online

  Copyright © 2013, 2016 by Kaare Sørensen and People’sPress

  English-language translation copyright © 2016 by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  First English-language Edition

  First published in Denmark by People’sPress under the title Halshug

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Sørensen, Kaare, author.

  Title: The mind of a terrorist: David Headley, the Mumbai massacre, and his European revenge / Kaare Sørensen; translated by Cory Klingsporn.

  Other titles: Halshug. English

  Description: First English-language edition. | New York: Arcade Publishing, [2016]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016005437 | ISBN 978-1-62872-514-8 (hardback) | ISBN 978-1-62872-545-2 (Ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Headley, David Coleman. | Terrorists—Biography. | Mumbai Terrorist Attacks, Mumbai, India, 2008. | BISAC: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Freedom & Security / Terrorism.

  Classification: LCC HV6430.H43 S6713 2016 | DDC 363.325092—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016005437

  Cover design by Anthony Morais

  Cover photo: AP Images

  Printed in the United States of America

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  Preface

  PART 1: MUMBAI

  1 A Beginning

  2 Light the Fire, My Brother

  3 The Army of the Righteous

  4 In the Control Room

  5 Burn Denmark Down

  6 The Prince

  7 A Dream about the Prophet

  PART 2: COPENHAGEN

  8 In Denmark

  9 The Women

  10 Why This Talk of Death?

  11 Brigade 313

  12 The Will

  13 Cut Their Heads Off

  14 The European Cells

  15 The Suspicion

  16 A Desperate Man

  17 Sacrifice Everything

  18 From Stockholm

  19 The Truth

  Afterword

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Photo Insert

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This book is a reconstruction of real events.

  All dialogue, all the people, meetings, and descriptions are based on a comprehensive collection of documentation.

  Central in this context are more than three hundred previously unpublished emails and private letters sent from the man at the center of the story, David Headley, during the period from 2008 to 2009.

  In addition, this book builds on the material from several comprehensive interrogation reports, secret audio recordings of the terrorism suspect’s discussions in vehicles and offices, comprehensive electronic wiretapping of mobile phones in several countries—including 284 calls from the terrorist attack in Mumbai, from November 26 to November 29, 2008—court transcripts and materials from several trials in the United States, Pakistan, India, and Sweden; internal documents from American embassies, witness statements, military reports and analyses, newspaper articles, recordings from surveillance cameras, hotel receipts, and old boarding passes, passport stamps, journals, martyr videos, and the author’s own interviews with eyewitnesses, lawyers, intelligence officers, experts, and others.

  Most sources are described in detail at the end of this book, though some wish to remain anonymous, either because they possess confidential information or because they fear for their lives.

  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.

  Headley knows the secret about terror. It’s not about death. Not even close. Even though that is exactly what we’ve seen again and again in attacks over the past several years: Tourists with a drink in their hand shot dead at a concert in Paris. Cartoonists in the same city killed at their place of work. Men and women from all over the world blown to pieces with deadly bombs at the airport and in a subway station in Brussels. A British soldier stabbed, then hacked to death while walking on the streets of London.

  A fresh incident preceded by the words “mass casualty” and all too often a number so high it is almost impossible to comprehend.

  Yet, for modern-day Islamic terrorists the number of dead and wounded doesn’t really matter. Killing is part of the mission, of course, but the ultimate goal is something else. It’s about the creation of fear. Fear that will spread like an airborne virus from news anchors to the world. And, over time, will force us to change the very nature of our societies.

  David Headley is one of these creators of fear. He is the designer.

  And Headley is special. He is one of very few Americans who have become involved in Islamic terror at the absolute highest levels and gained access to some of the world’s most sought-after men.

  This book is a journey through David Headley’s chaotic life. It’s a journey through his thoughts and ideas. His actions. The killings. And why it all happened. In part, in his own words.

  In order to combat fear, we first need to understand. And in order to understand, we need to get inside the mind of a terrorist.

  PART 1

  MUMBAI

  1

  A BEGINNING

  Mumbai, India

  Saturday, April 12, 2008, 3:00 a.m.

  He had wasted his time.

  The tourist ferries were packed with two decks of overweight Americans and Brits who had ventured out from their luxury hotels for a few hours before quickly returning to the pool to pour themselves yet another drink.

  Pathetic. Just pathetic.

  He had taken the ferries twice, but it didn’t help much. Harbor cruises couldn’t give him the kind of answers he was looking for.

  Instead, he now stood on the deck of a little fishing boat as it traveled quickly out into the darkness, the smell of fish and warm seawater filling his senses. He exchanged a few words with the fisherman who had agreed to take him along on this special night cruise in the Arabian Sea, and he sensed that he was on the right path.

  Like all the other big modern cities in the world, Mumbai lit the darkness behind him even now, at three in the morning on a random Friday night. They were still partying there. Letting loose. Breaking the rules. Even here, from nearly three miles out, the huge city resembled an impressive, unconquerable fort. Too large to really shake. A city that never went totally dark, though on the ocean darkness was everywhere.

  They had no idea.

  How did he get here, anyway?

  Was it hate for India that had brought him on this deck in the dark of night? That time they bombed his school, more than thirty-five years ago? Was it because of his stint as a drug smuggler? Or as an agent for the Am
ericans? Was it the women? The pictures from Abu Ghraib, the Qur’an thrown into the toilet at Guantánamo, or the cartoons of Muhammad in Denmark?

  Or was it something greater?

  That day, it was for Allah, the only true God that had ever existed. He had no doubts. He was here because he needed to be right here. He was a soldier in an army assembled by Allah. His life had been a bit of a mess, sure, he knew that, but his mission wouldn’t have been possible without his past.

  Everything had led up to this trip.

  The day before, he had gone down to the fishermen’s village and found the fisherman, who lived in a weathered hut near a small Hindu temple. He introduced himself as David Headley. That had been his name for some years now, and he was getting used to it. It sounded American. That was the whole idea.

  He’d taken his video camera down to the fisherman’s hut and done his best to look like nothing other than an ordinary, adventure-seeking American tourist. He kept his Muslim background, his thoughts about Indians, and his true reasons for the trip to himself.

  It was the fisherman who suggested that Headley come back the following night and sail with him, if he wanted a genuine experience of the sea around Mumbai. Headley quickly said yes.

  He was searching for the perfect site to make landfall. A place from which everything could be set in motion. And a route there without reefs or other undersea dangers. If there was anybody who knew a safe way through the waters around Mumbai, it had to be this fisherman. He’d give Headley answers without even knowing it. All he had to do was sail.

  According to the original plan, the Gateway of India monument, on the eastern side of the peninsula that splits Mumbai from the mainland, was to be the starting point. It sits right across from the majestic Taj Hotel. Headley had to admit that it was an iconic location for beginning a terrorist attack.

  To reach the old harbor, though, you have to travel around the southern tip of Mumbai, where the coast guard could be a little too watchful. Headley saw far too many gunboats with uniformed guards on board for that plan to work. The fashionable area along the Cuffe Parade on Mumbai’s west side would be better. Much better. The men would be coming from the west, down from Pakistan.

  The little fishing village by the beach seemed just right—unlike the rest of the area, it was dirty and often chaotic. There might occasionally be a fair number of people around, but the poor fishermen weren’t the kind to complain or call the police if they noticed anything unusual. On the contrary, if there was a crowd, it would be the perfect cover. At the same time, the village was centrally located, and you could quickly go straight up to the main road, hail a taxi, and be wherever in the city you wanted to be within a few minutes.

  The outing with the fisherman had convinced Headley: it was possible to go from international waters to the coast and onto land without encountering any significant obstacles.

  The men would turn up right in the left atrium of Mumbai’s heart, and nobody would realize until it was too late.

  He saved the beach’s coordinates on his GPS.

  It would begin here. Right here.

  2

  LIGHT THE FIRE, MY BROTHER

  Mumbai, India

  Wednesday, November 26, 2008

  18° 55' 11.80", 72° 49' 32.30".

  The handheld GPS device showed the position on its large screen inside the waterproof rubber case.

  They were there.

  The black-and-yellow inflatable dinghy reached the shore, and eight of the ten young men quickly jumped out onto the beach with their backpacks. They were silent. The remaining two members of the group fired up the powerful Yamaha outboard motor once more and disappeared into the darkness with the boat, to make landfall elsewhere.

  The eight young men stepped over paper, discarded food scraps, and brightly colored old plastic bottles as they made their way up the beach in the poor fishing village.

  They split up into four groups of two without a sound.

  A few of the vendors were surprised at the sight of men with big backpacks in a place normally frequented only by the local fishermen, but they were told to “mind their own business.”

  Other witnesses who noticed the young men in T-shirts and worn-out jeans got the same message.

  “And what about you? Mind your own business!” said the men, who told other curious bystanders that they were students from a university in Hyderabad, another large Indian city.

  In their pockets they carried student IDs with Indian names like Samir, Naresh, Arjunkumar, Dinesh, Raghubir, Arun, and Rohit in case anyone questioned their cover story.

  But no one stopped them.

  Nazir and Arshad were both twenty-three years old and anything but students. It was years since they’d even opened a book. Apart from the Qur’an, that is.

  Walking calmly, they proceeded the short distance from the shore to the busy highway and hailed one of the many taxis available at all hours at the taxi stand.

  In the backseat, one of the men fished a little brick of what looked like modeling clay out of his bag. The brick, which weighed about eleven pounds, was connected to a timing device and a stopwatch, and there were instructions in Urdu to ensure that, in the heat of battle, they wouldn’t attach the five loose wires incorrectly.

  Nazir and Arshad connected the wires and hid the first bomb under a seat in the taxi.

  The mission had begun.

  In a hotel room less than half a mile away sat a Danish man by the name of Jesper Bornak, phone in hand.

  An Indian business contact had first postponed and then canceled a dinner, so Jesper now weighed his options for how to spend the remainder of the evening.

  As a thirty-four-year-old independent businessman with his own freight company, a little daughter, and an almost-newborn son back home in Denmark, he always made good use of a free evening. There was always a mountain of emails that needed a reply. And always a considerable sleep deficit to work down.

  When was the last time he’d simply thrown himself on the bed, relaxed, and read a book?

  The big cities in his travels were just scenery for the long meetings filled with negotiating tactics, shipping containers, and stacks of paper. Singapore, Jakarta, Mumbai. It was all the same.

  After a few days of negotiations with Indian customs officers about some containers in various far-flung parts of India, Jesper felt his curiosity about the big city grow.

  “Jesper Bornak has returned to ‘civilization’ in Mumbai,” he had written on Facebook page not long before.

  He called Gitte at home.

  “Everything is great. Yes, I’m headed out to eat. I’ll call later. I love you,” he said and put on a jacket.

  Jesper left his wallet and passport at his hotel, the Oberoi-Trident. He stuffed two credit cards, two hundred dollars, and about two thousand Indian rupees in his pants pocket and, taking his black Nokia N95 out of its charger, left room 2735 for the last time.

  Near the popular Leopold Café in central Mumbai, Nazir and Arshad—the group’s first two-man team—got out of their taxi. They paid, apparently in American dollars, and were quickly stopped by a merchant who thought they were tourists.

  “Want a T-shirt?” he asked.

  “No,” they replied, and pointed at the café instead. “Is the Leopold Café famous?”

  The merchant replied yes.

  The two stood for some time with an arm around the other’s shoulder, smiling. They both seemed in high spirits.

  Perhaps they were remembering the words instilled in them by the men in Pakistan over the past weeks and days:

  “This is a struggle between Islam and the unbelievers. We’re the people God has chosen to defend our religion against the unbelievers.”

  Some of the women who happened to be there noticed that the two men were in excellent shape physically and were good-looking too.

  Jesper Bornak hopped into a taxi for the short drive to Leopold Café. He paid far too much for the trip, but that didn’t matter much to
him. It amounted to less than a dollar, and he was in a good mood.

  In a corner of the café, he got a seat at a table where four stewardesses and a steward from Lufthansa were enjoying a free evening before they would once again serve drinks and airplane food all the way back to Germany.

  Thirty-eight-year-old Thomas ran in his free time, so he and Jesper quickly got on well with each other. They spoke of marathons and Jesper’s plans to run, cycle, and swim his way through a triathlon sometime next year. It happened that the group from Lufthansa was staying at the same hotel as Jesper.

  “It’s a small world,” they said with a smile, as Jesper ordered chicken tikka masala, garlic naan, and a much-needed, tall, cold draft beer.

  Leopold truly lived up to the description in Gregory David Roberts’ cult novel Shantaram—a gathering place for Western businesspeople, Indian drug dealers, and happy world travelers with blue Lonely Planet books in hand and credit cards in their pockets.

  On the wall hung little messages of greeting from tourists from all over the world, honoring the author.

  Behind Jesper sat two Indian men drinking the café’s specialty: more than seventy ounces of freshly brewed beer from a sort of glass column with its own tap. To his right sat Line Kristin Woldbeck, a Norwegian woman in an Indian dress and with a prominent nose ring; her husband, Arne Strømme; and their Indian friend, Meetu.

  The big TV screen was transmitting live from the large city of Cuttack, about nine hundred miles away, where India was playing the fifth cricket match this month against England. Most of the country was following the match, truly a life-and-death matter. Leopold Café was no exception.

  Jesper had finished the spicy chicken and was talking with the Lufthansa group about trips they’d made to Tehran. He was in the middle of a cup of coffee when he first heard the sound of small explosions from the street outside. It lasted just a few seconds and sounded a lot like firecrackers or some other fireworks. Completely normal in that part of Mumbai.

  Jesper and Thomas continued talking.

  Then, something was tossed through the door into the restaurant.