The Mumbai terror attacks co-accused David Coleman Headley (Daood Sayed Gilani, a Chicago-based Pakistani American) has testified that the Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the spy agency, trained him in espionage against India.

Headley told a Chicago court, “ISI did provide me training” to a question by the defence attorney Charles D Swift during the trial of Pakistani-Canadian Tawahhur Rana, another coaccused in the 26/11 attacks. The statements formed part of the testimony of Headley, who has pleaded guilty. These disclosures, endorse India’s charges that elements of ISI were involved in the Mumbai attacks.

According to Headley, Major Iqbal was his ISI handler and training was imparted in a two-storey safe house in Lahore near the airport. Headley told the court that when he met Major Iqbal in 2006, he expressed dissatisfaction at the military and espionage training that he had received from the Lashkare-Toiba earlier, hence the intensified training by ISI.