David Headley, a peripatetic Chicagoan accused of scouting potential terrorism targets in India and plotting to kill two Danish journalists, was arrested on terrorism charges last month at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on the first leg of a trip to Pakistan, says the Washington Post. Headley and Chicago businessman Tahawwur Hussain Rana are suspected Islamist militants charged not with targeting the U.S., but with staging foreign operations from relative anonymity on American soil. Their profile is a fresh one, and it is being viewed by U.S. authorities with alarm.
One counterterrorism official described as “eye-opening” an investigation that concluded the two men worked with two Pakistan-based terrorist organizations allied with al-Qaeda, Lashkar-i-Taiba and Harkat-e-Jihad-e-Islami. It is a reminder that al-Qaeda or its imitators continue to try to build a network of operatives inside the U.S.