LeT used Guj riot video to motivate Headley

Incident used as a major recruiting tool to carry out "jihad" by the militant group

PTI | June 14, 2011



LeT used videos of the 2002 Gujarat riots to motivate David Headley, a co-accused in the 26/11 attacks, to carry out "jihad" against India, indicating how the incident is being used as a major recruiting tool by the banned Pakistani militant group.

Headley, who was trained by LeT in terror operations, besides those from the ISI, had told the Chicago court last month that the Gujarat riots was very often the topic of discussion among them.

"Yes", Headley said when the government prosecutor asked him if the Gujarat riot was motivating to him to carry "jihad" against India.

"It was a massacre that had happened, and they showed people running, houses being burnt. And also since that time from 2002 till 2007, the Lashkar office itself had received hundreds of letters from Muslims in Gujarat asking for help," Headley told the court in response to a question from the attorney.

Headley told the court of having shown by the LeT leaders the hidden-camera interview of one Baba Bajrangi, said to be a VHP leader, who relocated himself from Mumbai to Gujarat during the riots.

In the video Baba Bajrangi claimed that he had killed a lot of women and burnt houses and stuff.

"That's available on YouTube and he showed it to me on disk," Headley said referring to his conversation with LeT leaders in Pakistan.

"They're videos of the massacres that had taken place in Gujarat a few years earlier and the breaking of the Babri Mosque, other things like that," Headley said when asked about the videos being shown to him by the Lashkar leaders ahead of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

These videos were shown to Headley, when he visited the Muzzaffarabad headquarters if LeT and after the screening of each of these videos they used to discuss hatred against India.

"All of us spent a few weeks there watching videos of different actions that had taken place in India against Muslims," Headley told the court in response to a question.

"We saw a lot of videos of India," Headley said adding that these videos were seen in the company of top LeT leaders and his Pak handlers including Zaki ur- Rehman, Sajid Mir and Muzammill.

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