WASHINGTON: Tahawwur Rana, a businessman from Chicago, has been granted extradition to India, where he is wanted for his alleged role in the 2008 Mumbai terror attack.
At least 166 people were killed in the attack on India’s financial centre, which was attributed to an Islamic terrorist group that Rana allegedly supported in 2011. But the more serious accusation of aiding in the attack’s planning was dropped against him.
Following India’s extradition request in 2020, the businessman was detained.
Rana strongly rejected all charges against him and challenged India’s request for extradition which was also backed by the US government. But on Monday, a judge in Chicago approved his extradition to India.
According to the court, Rana had been accused of murder, terrorist actions, and criminal conspiracy in India, all of which were extraditable offences under the US-India treaty.
Rana will, however, continue to be held in US custody until the Secretary of State for India makes a final decision regarding his extradition.
A group of ten men stormed a train station, cafes, hotels, and a Jewish centre in Mumbai in November 2008, they shot and threw bombs, killing more than 160 people.
Rana, a Pakistani-born Canadian, was charged by Indian officials with planning with his childhood friend David Coleman Headley to aid the militant organisation which was held responsible for the attack.
According to the case’s prosecutors, Headley utilised the Mumbai office of Rana’s Chicago-based immigration services company as cover in 2006 to research locations for the 2008 attack.
Rana was also charged with enabling Headley to enter newspaper offices as a representative of his company by pretending to be interested in buying advertising space.
In 2011, Headley testified against Rana and is currently serving a 35-year prison sentence in the US for his involvement in the attacks.
At the time, Headley, an old friend from their days in a Pakistani military school, was accused of manipulating and deceiving Rana by his defence team. Rana was found guilty in 2011 by a federal jury in Chicago of supporting the militant group and participating in a foiled plot to attack a Danish newspaper. However, charges of direct complicity in the Mumbai attacks were dropped against him.
He received a 14-year prison sentence in 2013. After testing positive for Covid-19 in 2020, Rana was released from prison in the US. After India requested his extradition, he was arrested once again.
