The Terror Codes

To start with,the 26/11 plotters had assigned code names among themselves. Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi,one of the men charged with the Mumbai attacks,is referred to as ‘chacha’ by the group while Illyas Kashmiri is ‘doctor’ or ‘pir-sahib’ in the emails. In emails exchanged after the death of his father,Headley says JuD chief Hafiz Saeed,referred to as ‘professor’,came to his house to pay condolences.

In emails inquiring about the reported death of Illyas Kashmiri (in a drone attack),they write about “pir sahib” suffering a “heart attack”. In one of the emails,Headley and Rana refer to Sameer Ali,one of the Lashkar handlers,as ‘Khalid bin Walid’. Headley’s wives,who congratulated him after the Mumbai attack,have codes: M1 for the first wife,M2 for the second.

An analysis of around two dozens emails (listed by the Northern Illinois court),exchanged between Headley and all those involved in the Mumbai attacks,reveals that most of his handlers,who changed from time to time,wrote succinct emails with instructions,unlike Rana and Headley,who wrote long emails,at times with giveaway clues to investigators.

NIA sleuths,who are probing the Headley-Rana case,say the emails will help them during the trial in India.

Headley used a yahoo account,ranger1dave@yahoo.com,while he was in India before the 26/11 attack. But when the group was planning to attack the Danish newspaper offices (the project was codenamed Mickey Mouse Project or MMP),Headley mostly used two other email IDs: impervious2pain@ yahoo.com and oblivioustopain@yahoo.com. For the first account,he registered himself as David H and as Derek Underwood for the second.

Before the Mumbai attacks,Headley left a message on a Yahoo Group called ‘abdalians’. A review of the messages in this group makes it clear that the members are graduates of a military school in Hasan Abdal,in Attock district in Pakistan. In one such email sent on January 23,2009,Headley lauds Rana,also a member of the group,for taking on another member of the group who appears as ‘Mr Winsconsin’. Headley,according to investigators,used the name Daood Gilani while being a member of this group.

There are more codes: countries where recce had to be done were called ‘projects’ while the targets were referred to as ‘real estate property’. In one of the emails Headley sent using an email ID registered in the name of Vinod Gulati,with ID as gulati22@hotmail.com,he asks his handler to come for ‘real estate training’ in Pakistan,which according to the investigators,is a code for terror training. Another code they used was ‘investment plans’,which was used to mean future terror targets.

An analysis of these coded emails reveals that the Lashkar gave up its MMP project (the attack on the Danish newspaper) and wanted Headley to return to India for future ‘investments’. Baffled,Headley,who did a recee of the two places in Denmark,tries to convince his handler and others,including Rana,that he can execute the plot in Denmark all by himself. But before he could do so,he was arrested.