The Mind of a Terrorist Read online

  Samraz watched Rana weep when he learned of the many deaths in Mumbai, but he later told Headley that he felt that the nine perpetrators who were killed deserved Pakistan’s highest military honors, Nishan-e-Haider.

  After the attack, Headley apologized to him for having used the office when he was planning it. That wasn’t right. He knew very well that he already owed Rana some favors, and now he owed him one more.

  “And we will surely test you with something of fear and hunger and a loss of wealth and lives and fruits, but give good tidings to the patient, who, when disaster strikes them, say, ‘Indeed we belong to Allah, and indeed to Him we will return.’ Those are the ones upon whom are blessings from their Lord and mercy. And it is those who are the rightly guided.”*

  Headley read the three verses from the Qur’an in his apartment in Chicago right after Christmas Eve 2008.

  Your father is dead, the message from Pakistan had said. Now Headley was reading the many condolences sent by friends and family. It hurt.

  He had always been close to his father—even after having left Pakistan in the 1970s to live with his mother in the States. But heroin and prison didn’t suit Syed Saleem Gliani, and he had asked his eldest son’s half-siblings to stay far away from their brother.

  Yet he himself spoke often with Headley. And while it may be that Saleem Gilani thought his son had “gone completely insane” when it came to Islam, there was great respect between the two men.

  Saleem Gilani had lived to be eighty years old, and he was slated to receive the prestigious Hilal-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s second-highest honor, given for a “praiseworthy effort” for Pakistan’s “national interests, world peace, or culture.” The prize was to be awarded by the president of Pakistan.

  “I hope it won’t be posthumous,” Saleem Gilani had joked in one of the last conversations Headley had had with him.

  After Syed Saleem Gilani’s death, the Pakistani prime minister, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, came to the family’s house in Lahore to pay his respects. Despite their first and last names, Headley’s father and the prime minister weren’t related, though Headley’s half-brother on his father’s side, Danyal Gilani, did happen to work as a spokesman for the prime minister at that time.

  The prime minister offered the family his condolences and praise for Saleem Gilani’s work for Radio Pakistan for more than forty years.

  “He prayed to Allah Almighty to rest the departed soul in eternal peace and grant courage to the bereaved family to bear this irreparable loss with fortitude,” the local media wrote of the visit.

  The Lashkar leader Hafiz Saeed also sent a man to show his respect for Headley’s father.

  As is the Muslim tradition, Saleem Gilani was buried on the same day he died in the Shah Jamal cemetery in Lahore. The ceremony took place on in the evening of December 25, right after the fourth of the five daily prayers. Because of this constraint, Headley wasn’t able to fly home in time for the burial. He remained in Chicago, where he was preparing to review the final details before the trip to Denmark.

  “So that’s it. I can never make up for this loss. I hope and pray Allah admits him into Paradise and request all you brothers to pray for the same,” Headley wrote to his friends in Pakistan.

  “I am very upset about dad passing away. Our fathers, mothers, children and ourselves, everything must become Fana [pass away] one day no matter what we do. I spoke to him only a day before. The things I learnt from him nobody can tell me anymore. He was like an encyclopedia of information.”

  In addition to his good friends Sajid Mir and Iqbal, Headley was also increasingly in contact with Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, a Pakistani best known by the nickname “Pasha.” He was a hard-core jihadist fighter who for religious reasons had refused to fight the Taliban when, in 2001, they’d fled the cave battles in the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan and crossed the border into Pakistan. Because of that refusal, he was thrown out of the Pakistani army.

  Headley had a lot of respect for him because of it.

  Pasha reserved his love for Lashkar, and Headley had received weapons training from him, when he was at a training camp in the mountains in northwestern Pakistan. Some years later, Pasha decided to leave Lashkar, but he kept in touch with Headley, whom he affectionately called Dave Salafi.

  Pasha warned Headley to be careful: Lashkar was known for abandoning projects. They often developed enthusiasms for good ideas that never materialized. If that occurred, all Headley had to do was to let him know. Pasha had a contact who could make miracles happen.

  He didn’t give a name. But he made it known that his contact had direct access to al-Qaeda. Pasha had previously met Osama bin Laden in a number of apartments. There weren’t many who could boast of that.

  “Yes, I am ready for Mickey Mouse project, but I think it will be better to go after new year as everything is shut down from Christmas to new year,” Headley wrote in an email to Pasha in Pakistan.

  “I will spend a week or so the first time to get a feel of the property. If you have any other helpful info on this project, send it to me. If God wants, I will return by middle of next month to you,” wrote Headley.

  He asked Pasha to push hard to get the Mickey Mouse project quickly “approved” and financed, for the “situation is desperate,” as he wrote in an email.

  The “situation” was a thirst for revenge, not Headley’s own situation. He was ready to leave.

  “Pray that I make a lot of money on the project,” he wrote, in reference to the honors he would receive when the offices in Denmark were in flames. And then, he added an unusual request: if the attack in Denmark was approved by Allah and Headley were to receive honors for it, he would like those honors to be awarded to his now deceased father.

  “Is this possible?” Headley wrote to Pasha.

  “Your every good doing is definitely returned towards your deceased parents, if they had true faith,” came the answer from Pakistan.

  Headley’s mother had been a Christian her entire life, and despite Headley’s best efforts, he never got her to convert to Islam. Their disagreement on religion led to long periods during which they didn’t speak to each other. She died barely a year before Headley’s father, at sixty-eight, and was buried in a cemetery next to the Anglican church in Beltsville, Maryland.

  Several friends from Pakistan wrote long emails to Headley containing excerpts from the Qur’an and assuring him that he would meet his father again in Paradise.

  “The ayat [verses from the Qur’an] quoted by you are really appropriate and give me strength,” wrote Headley, who in the same email used his father’s death to allow his thoughts and words to wander into the subject of jihad.

  “This life is only temporary. Look at the slaughter of over 200 Palestinian civilians today by the Israelis without the world batting an eye. Their blood means nothing to the UN or EU. You can bet some Mu’min [faithful Muslim] somewhere, is planning retaliation today, not caring about whether the targets are civilian or military. The doors of Justice are firmly closed for Muslims, which is why they have taken matters in their own hands. They intend to bring death to the doorstep of the Pharaohs of today, even as they suffer themselves.”

  Headley was speaking about himself. He was ready for Denmark.

  In Chicago, Headley fell asleep. In a dream he found himself in Saudi Arabia at the Holy Prophet Mohammad’s tomb within the old Prophet’s Mosque in Medina.

  A man was standing by the Prophet’s tomb, and when Headley asked who the empty one alongside it was for, the man answered:

  “When you die, you will be buried here.”

  Osama bin Laden, too, had dreams before large operations and assigned great importance to them.

  Headley woke on a crystal-clear morning that Sunday, January 11, 2009. In his mind there was no doubt. The dream was blessed. And the tomb would be his reward, should the mission in Denmark succeed.

  * Verses 2:155–157 from the Qur’an.

  PART 2

  COPENHA
GEN

  8

  IN DENMARK

  Copenhagen

  Sunday, January 18, 2009

  The Eagles were behind for most of the game, which looked like it would end in a loss. In the third quarter, though, Philadelphia fought its way to 25–24, so there was still hope. But then the Arizona Cardinals’ Tim Hightower made a touchdown with less than three minutes to go, and it was all over for the Eagles. They lost 25–32.

  Headley was watching the game in a bar in Copenhagen. Though he really was more of a basketball guy, he rarely missed a game when the Eagles were playing—not even when he was on a rather unusual trip.

  It was after midnight by the time Headley returned to his room in the Mission Hotel Nebo, a few feet from Copenhagen’s Central Station.

  He was in Denmark for the first time. From the outside, it seemed like a wonderful country, with friendly people and beautiful women, yet they clearly felt some need to walk all over Islam and Muhammad. He had no trouble reminding himself why he was here.

  To cover his tracks, Headley had flown from Chicago to Philadelphia, New York, and Dubai before finally touching down at the airport in Frankfurt on Friday, January 16. This was where he had been caught with heroin-filled luggage nearly twenty years before. But he had no problems getting through customs and received a stamp on page 48 of his extended passport. He didn’t even need a visa to enter Europe.

  In Frankfurt, Headley rented a car and drove to Copenhagen. Almost immediately upon his arrival, he began to check out the city.

  The game between the Eagles and the Cardinals had caused him to miss a phone call from Rana, but he sent an email soon after and the two remained in touch throughout his stay in Denmark. Normally, they spoke Punjabi together, but to avoid attracting unnecessary attention, they used English now during their phone calls and in emails. Headley wrote Rana:

  “I checked out business opportunities here. They seem quite promising. I am going right now to see if I can put an ad for our company and also check the feasibility to open up an office here. Sun comes out at 8:30 am here…. I am 7 hours ahead of you…. Bye for now. Dave.”

  In Kongens Nytorv, or King’s New Square, in central Copenhagen, some young people were ice skating. Their blades danced sharply on the ice as they squealed with joy. Overnight, temperatures had reached nearly freezing; now it was a few degrees warmer but still cold. January sales had been under way for a few weeks, but the big department store Magasin, located in the center of the square near the skating rink, was doing a brisk business.

  Headley walked past them on his way to an unusual building. He was tense but in control.

  Eight Kongens Nytorv had been the headquarters of A. P. Møller’s shipping company, A. P. Møller-Mærsk, for more than sixty years. The owner’s son, Mærsk Mc-Kinney, had worked his first day at his father’s company in this very building at the age of nineteen. That was back in 1933. After A. P. Møller moved headquarters to the Esplanade in 1979, the building in Kongens Nytorv was leased to a series of businesses, until, in 1997, the Jyllands-Posten took over all five floors with its staff of two hundred, making the building its Copenhagen office.

  On the ground floor, five large plate glass windows faced the street, while all four upper floors had five high windows with a view of the square, the skating rink, Hotel d’Angleterre, and the Royal Theatre. On the roof, the newspaper’s name was spelled out in big yellow letters, with the six-pointed star in the middle: MORGENAVISEN JYLLANDS-POSTEN. There was no mistaking it.

  Headley pressed the button for the intercom.

  From the other side of the security doors came a high-pitched tone, and the female receptionist looked up.

  Outside in the cold stood a tall, middle-aged man in a suit and tie, with a friendly smile—probably another American or British tourist on the way from the popular Nyhavn by the harbor, thought Gitte Johansen, the receptionist.

  “No, we don’t sell stamps, unfortunately,” was something the people on the ground floor of Jyllands-Posten were used to saying with a patronizing smile to those who mistakenly thought that Jyllands-Posten must be a post office, because of the “Posten” part.

  Gitte pressed the button. The first glass door opened, Headley stepped in, the door behind him closed, and a few seconds later door number two was opened.

  He walked calmly up to Gitte at the front desk.

  Headley had hoped that by coming unannounced he might make it farther into the offices and have a look around. But after walking past the building several times, he sensed it wouldn’t be quite that easy. Security had been tightened considerably since the cartoons were published.

  Instead, he chose another solution that he had also prepared. The trick was to make it seem natural, almost a little casual.

  “I’d like to run an advertisement,” he said in measured English as he pulled a stack of typed papers from a folder. Pointing to some text, he began asking questions.

  A short while later, the phone rang in the fifth-floor office of a young advertising salesman, whom the receptionist had seen head upstairs not long ago.

  “He’s at the front desk? Okay, I’m on my way right now,” he answered before rushing down the stairs. It wasn’t every day that a potential client just showed up on his own without an appointment, but late on a Tuesday morning was just fine for this advertising salesman.

  The two men shook hands and sat down at a round glass table near the front desk. From their gray chairs, they could gaze out on King’s New Square where pedestrians went by in heavy jackets.

  “I represent a company in Chicago,” the American said, explaining his plans to expand the company and establish a brand-new office in Copenhagen. It would be an immigration office, helping traveling American and Pakistani engineers with work permits, visas, and housing in Denmark, among other things. The first of what would hopefully be many offices in Europe.

  Such a business would naturally need some locations in Copenhagen—maybe near Jyllands-Posten, he’d have to look into that later—and advertising in the country’s largest newspaper. What would that cost?

  The salesman gave the price of a small front-page advertisement—a popular solution—and discussed the paper’s readership and business clientele as well as the advantages of choosing Jyllands-Posten over a competitor.

  Headley listened attentively, took notes, and asked questions to clarify. He sounded engaged. But, of course, the cost of advertising wasn’t the reason he had traveled from Chicago more than 3,000 miles to sit in this very chair. Far from it.

  While seated there, Headley could look about casually and gather impressions that might help him later on. He cast his eyes over the carpets, the large world map with small gold stars representing the paper’s correspondents, the receptionist’s high steel desk, and the big Fujitsu TV on the wall, showing the day’s news along with small snippets of text and announcing that Barack Obama would be inaugurated as the next president of the United States in just a few hours.

  Not to mention the double doors to keep unauthorized people out and the large plate glass windows with shatter-resistant film designed to prevent glass shrapnel in the event of an explosion—either from the street or from within the building. And the security system that first locked people in the main entrance and then locked off the stairs to the offices on the higher floors where the next day’s paper was taking shape and the writers for the Internet news desk crafted news stories around the clock.

  Headley pictured the front desk becoming the site of a battle so impressive the whole world would remember it. They wouldn’t forget the date either. It would be on the cover of every European newspaper the next day, in big letters. Like September 11, 2001, in New York and Washington, DC, March 11, 2004, in Madrid, July 7, 2005, in London, and November 26, 2008, in Mumbai.

  Upstairs, the editorial rooms filled with reporters and photographers would be shrouded in smoke and death. Explosions and the pistol shots would be felt and heard in the French embassy next door and busy adjace
nt streets.

  And soon after that, the entire world would follow the drama on live TV, as young well-trained Muslim men killed everyone in their path. Even those who just happened to be in the building by pure chance. Allah would be on the murderers’ side. Jihad, the holy and eternally just war.

  Fifty-five days had passed since the onset of the Mumbai attack. And now he was sitting here.

  Headley left his business card, which presented him as a lawyer and immigration consultant. They had talked for a good while, about twenty minutes. But with his Western appearance and his mild, innocuous American sentences, it wasn’t impossible that the salesman might quickly forget him. That is, were it not for Headley’s blue and brown eyes.

  The meeting with the salesman ended with a handshake, a “Thank you,” and “We’ll talk later, send me an email.” And the American businessman disappeared through the security doors.

  That evening back in his hotel, Headley sat down at his keyboard.

  “Everything is fine here. I went to a newspaper to find out about advertising our company. I gave him my card so they might call any of the three offices to verify. Ask New York and Toronto offices to remember me,” Headley wrote in an email to Rana, which had “Copenhagen” as the subject line. He carefully avoided naming Jyllands-Posten explicitly. Keeping up his cover story, he went to grouse about the advertising rates.

  “The rates are pretty steep, like 3000 dollars for the front page, for one time,” he wrote. He had persuaded the salesman to send him more pricing information.

  “I gave our business email, so keep alert for his mail. Forward this e-mail to me so we can invite him for a visit to Chicago and make friends with him to get better rates.”

  Headley didn’t actually intend to invite the salesman to the United States but wanted to keep his options open. A friend in Copenhagen might be useful later on—the way Rahul Bhatt and Vilas Varak had been in Mumbai. If it gave him access to sensitive information about the paper’s security system, a friendship with a Jyllands-Posten employee could be worth its weight in gold.