David Headley case: What's behind spate of US-based terrorist plots?
Federal prosecutors filed charges this week against Chicago resident David Headley in connection with the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack. On Wednesday, Pakistan police said they have arrested five Americans suspected of seeking ties with terrorists there.
Chicago
A scene in a Chicago courtroom Wednesday served as one of many recent reminders that even as President Obama dispatches 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan to disrupt, dismantle, and destroy Al Qaeda, he faces a growing radicalization of Islamic extremists here on American soil.
Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to help Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based terrorist organization, plan the November 2008 attack on Mumbai that killed 170 people.
Federal prosecutors say Mr. 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.
Antiterrorism officials say the evidence from recent arrests in Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, New York, and other US cities, paints the picture of American citizens getting radicalized 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.
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