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CHICAGO : The charismatic Chicago man accused of being a scout for the deadly 2008 Mumbai siege and a plot to kill a Danish cartoonist is set to plead guilty to terrorism charges, US court records showed Tuesday.
David Coleman Headley, 49, is accused of being a scout for two different Pakistan-based terrorist groups who used a friend's immigration company as a cover for surveillance activities in India and Denmark.
The Washington-born son of a former Pakistani diplomat and American mother, Headley reportedly befriended Bollywood stars and even dated an actress during his lengthy surveillance trips to Mumbai.
Charging documents also indicated Headley was so eager to kill a Danish cartoonist who sparked outrage with cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed that he began working seriously on that plot two months before the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Headley, who has been cooperating with prosecutors since his October arrest, is set to appear in a Chicago federal court at 1830 GMT Thursday for a change of plea hearing, court documents showed.
It was not clear whether Headley would plead guilty to all or just some of the 12 charges laid against him in Chicago, some of which carried possible death penalty.
Headley's attorney confirmed that a plea deal was in the works but declined to say to which charges his client would admit.
"I am really reluctant to go into the specifics of what he's pleading to," defense attorney John Theis told AFP.
"I expect that there will be a plea agreement," he added. "And the details of that are what is (currently) being negotiated so I can't comment on anything."
Headley was initially arrested on terror charges related to a plot to attack Denmark's highest circulating daily, Jyllands-Posten, which triggered a furore in the Muslim world by publishing 12 cartoons of Prophet Mohammed in 2005.
Headley and his friend Tahawwur Hussain Rana were later charged in the Mumbai attacks.
Rana, who owns the Chicago-based First World Immigration Services that Headley allegedly used as a cover, insists that he is a pacifist who was "duped" by his friend and has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Headley also pled not guilty to the charges but has long been expected to eventually reach a plea deal with prosecutors.
In an alleged plot that reads like a movie thriller, Headley is accused of spending two years casing out Mumbai, even taking boat tours around the city's harbour to scope out landing sites for the attackers, who killed 166 people including six Americans.
Headley said he changed his name from Daood Gilani in 2006 so he could "present himself in India as an American who was neither Muslim nor Pakistani," charging documents said.
Indian media have reported that during his five lengthy trips to Mumbai Headley befriended Bollywood stars and developed a reputation as a fitness fanatic while staying in an expatriate enclave in south Mumbai near the US consulate.
Indian security analysts believe he could be the vital missing link in the bloody 60-hour siege which began on November 26, 2008.
The question about whether the 10 heavily-armed gunmen had specialist help to land undetected by sea and strike their targets with such precision has been posed ever since the attacks.
India and Washington blamed the deadly rampage on Pakistan's banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). The attacks stalled a fragile four-year peace process between the two nuclear-armed south Asian rivals.
Headley allegedly told investigators he had been working with the Islamist group LeT since 2002.
He began working with an Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group in Pakistan called Harakat-ul-Jihad-Islami on the Danish plot after LeT became distracted with the final planning for the Mumbai attack, charging documents alleged.
Headley allegedly told prosecutors he pretended to be interested in buying ads in Denmark's highest-circulation daily so he could tour the offices in Copenhagen and Arhus "in preparation for an attack," charging documents said.
Prosecutors say he was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare airport as he was on his way to deliver 13 surveillance videos to Harakat-ul-Jihad-Islami.
- AFP /ls
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