Headley pleads not guilty to charges of assisting Lashkar on 26/11 attacks

Chicago, Dec.10 (ANI): Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to help the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based terrorist organization, plan the November 2008 attack on Mumbai that killed 170 people.

Federal prosecutors say Headley visited Lashkar-e-Taiba training camps in Pakistan and conducting surveillance in Mumbai for the 2008 attack.

In October, he was also charged with conspiring to attack the offices of a Danish newspaper that published what many Muslims saw as offensive pictures of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005.

Anti-terrorism officials say the evidence from recent arrests in Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, New York, and other US cities, paints the picture of American citizens getting radicalised in their local communities, attending training camps in Pakistan or Somalia, and then returning to the US to help assist international terrorist bosses plan attacks in other countries or possibly, on these shores.

Meanwhile, Pakistani authorities said Wednesday that they have arrested five American men, and preliminary investigations suggest the men were seeking to link up with terrorist organizations in Pakistan.

Reports suggest the five men are from Virginia, and their families alerted the FBI when the men went missing.

The radicalisation of Americans to the extent that they would travel overseas to be skilled in terrorist acts is "quite significant" in showing "the involvement of the Al Qaeda core in Pakistan" in US Muslim communities. (ANI)