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Profile: who is David Coleman Headley?

By Channel 4 News

Updated on 21 January 2010

A timeline of events behind "double agent" David Headley - the American charged with helping Pakistani militants plan the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks which killed 170 people.

(A young David Headley with his sister credit: New York Times)

1960: Daood Syed Gilani is born in Washington DC to an American mother, Serril Headley and a Pakistani father Sayed Salim Gilani. The family moved to Pakistan. The right hand picture shows Headley with his younger sister and mother in Pakistan (credit: New York Times).

1970: His parents divorce and his mother returns to the US and opens a bar in Philadelphia called the Khyber Pass. Daood stays in Pakistan with his father.

1974-77: He attends an elite military boarding school in Pakistan called the Cadet College AbdalHasan.

1977: He moves to America to live with his mother in Philadelphia. Over the next few years he becomes involved with drugs - becoming an addict and a trafficker.

1989: He is caught with heroin and charged with conspiracy to import the drug according to court records.

1994: He moves to New York and opens a couple of video shops.

1997: He is arrested again on drug charges - but agrees to work with the Drug Enforcement Administration in return for a reduced sentence. He spents 15 months in prison and helps the DEA "infiltrate the very close-knit Pakistani community in New York" according to court records.

2002/2003: US prosecutors say Daood Gilani travels several times to Pakistan from his home in Chicago to trains in the terrorist camps of Kashmiri militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). Former classmates say they see him in Pakistan and are surprised that he's become very religious. His American uncle also reportedly says he became religious around this time.

2005: He allegedly becomes a Lashkar-e-Toiba operative and is tasked with travelling to India to conduct surveillance for a LeT terrorist plot.

Feb 2006: Daood Syed Gilani changes his name to David Coleman Headley to "present himself in India as an American who was neither Muslim nor Pakistani" according to the FBI.

Jun 2006: FBI says he obtains permission from his friend Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a former classmate and friend in Chicago, to open a satellite office of Rana's immigration consulting business in India.

Sep 2006 - Sep 2007: Prosecutors say he made several visits to India, then travelled onwards to Pakistan to share his findings with LeT higher-ups.

Apr 2008: US authorities say LeT tasks Headley with preparing surveillance video of Mumbai harbour, which is then used to prepare landing sites for the ten LeT gunmen to launch their attack on the city.

Oct 2008: The FBI says he comes to their attention after posting a message on a Yahoo discussion group about feeling "disposed toward violence" against Danish cartoonists who he says were "making fun of Islam" with cartoons of the prophet Mohammed.

Nov 2008: Mumbai is attacked by ten LeT gunmen who travel to India on boats from the Pakistani port city of Karachi. They enter the city from Mumbai harbour and attack the Taj Palace Hotel, the Oberoi, the main train station.

Early 2009: Prosecutors allege that David Headley travelled to Waziristan in Pakistan's tribal area to meet a senior Lashkar militant, Illyas Kashmiri. They allege the two men plan another terrorist attack, this time on the offices of Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that angered many Muslims.

2009: He makes a trip to Copenhagen and conducts survelliance of the newspaper offices.

Oct 2009: Headley is arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International airport as he was about to board a flight to Pakistan.

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