Pakistan has denied any connection with 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks accused Tahawwur Rana, asserting that he is a Canadian national and has not renewed his Pakistani documents in over two decades.
“He is a Canadian national and as per our record he has not renewed his Pakistani documents for over two decades,” Foreign Office spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan said responding to a press briefing in Islamabad, even as the Palam Air Force base in Delhi stood ready to receive the military plane carrying Rana from the United States for his trial in India.
Born in Pakistan in 1961, Rana served as a doctor in the Pakistani Army, before migrating to Canada in the 1990s and becoming a citizen in the early 2000s.
Though the spokesperson stopped short of providing details of “documents”, such documents often include a national identity card for overseas Pakistanis and a passport.
The 26/11 Mumbai terror attack plotter will be landing in Delhi on a special flight after he was extradited from the US late on Wednesday. Rana, 64, is expected to be arrested soon by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) after his exit from the Delhi airport and will be taken into custody at Tihar Jail.
Rana is believed to be a close aide of David Coleman Headley, the Pakistani-American terrorist who conducted reconnaissance missions for the attacks. Headley, now serving a prison sentence in the US, had testified that Rana provided both logistical and financial support for the Mumbai plot. Indian agencies have long maintained that Rana had deep connections with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the country’s Army, and the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) — the outfit behind the 26/11 attack.
As many as 166 people, including six Americans, were killed in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks in which 10 Pakistani terrorists laid a more than 60-hour siege, attacking and killing people at iconic and vital locations of Mumbai, including the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, CST railway station, and the Chabad House.
Story continues below this ad
Rana was taken into custody by the FBI in October 2009 in the US on charges of aiding an abortive terror plot targeting a Danish newspaper and supporting the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He was convicted two years later but managed to stall his extradition through appeals in American courts — all of which were eventually denied.