Mumbai terror suspect was drug informant
It was the beginning of a complicated, off-and-on relationship as a confidential informant with the Drug Enforcement Administration one that lasted more than a decade
Washington: Pakistani-American terror suspect David Coleman Headley, charged with scouting targets for Mumbai terror attacks, worked as a confidential informant with the Drug Enforcement Administration for more than a decade, according to a US media report.
The relationship began with his first arrest back in June 1988, when customs agents at the Frankfurt airport pulled aside an intense and striking young man waiting to get on a plane back home to Philadelphia, McClatchy Newspapers reported on Monday.
"They suspected he had heroin in his suitcase. They were right two kilos' worth from Pakistan, hidden under a false bottom," the report said. He wasn't tough to crack: Before the day was out, Daood "David" Gilani decided to save his own skin, agreeing to betray his drug-dealing partners by helping US drug agents set up a sting," it said.
It was the beginning of a complicated, off-and-on relationship as a confidential informant with the Drug Enforcement Administration one that lasted more than a decade.
In fact, Gilani was so helpful as a DEA informant in the late 1990s on heroin imported from Pakistan, according to records and Inquirer interviews, that prosecutors made a rare move: They ended his probation years early, allowing him to travel freely.
Within weeks he began training with terrorists in Pakistan, the report said.
New details are emerging about the strange double life of Headley, the son of a Pakistani broadcaster and a socialite who would spend evenings holding court and drinking splits of champagne in her bar, the Khyber Pass, McClatchy said.
He was briefly married to a Philadelphia woman in the 1980s whom he met at the bar.
