By Manish Chand and Arun Kumar, IANS,
Washington : Two days after meeting US President Barack Obama, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday expressed confidence that India will get access to Pakistani American terror suspect David Coleman Headley, a key plotter of the Mumbai attack now in US custody.
“The president is aware of (the) legal position and we will get access to Headley,” Manmohan Singh told journalists at the end of his four-day visit to Washington.
The issue of access to Headley, who had admitted scouting targets for the Mumbai attack in November 2008, figured prominently in wide-ranging discussions Manmohan Singh had with Obama Sunday.
Obama had assured Manmohan Singh that he was “fully supportive” of India’s request for access to Headley, and American officials are working through their legal system to make it possible.
Subsequently, National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon discussed modalities and legal processes to enable India to get access to Headley when he met his counterpart James Jones.
Headley, an American-Pakistani LeT operative, confessed to his role in plotting the 26/11 carnage in a plea bargain in a Chicago court last month to avoid death penalty.
Ten terrorists from Pakistan sneaked into Mumbai from sea and unleashed a carnage that left 166 people dead. One of the attackers, Ajmal Amir Kasab, was arrested while the rest were killed by security personnel.
The 49-year-old Headley also admitted that he attended training camps in Pakistan operated by LeT on five separate occasions between 2002 and 2005.