From Pakistan to Phila.: A terror suspect's journey

At age 16, as Daood Gilani, he was taken out of Pakistan, where he attended a military school, and brought to Philadelphia by his mother, a well-known Old City nightspot owner.

Today, under the name of David Coleman Headley, he sits in a federal prison in Chicago, charged by the FBI with planning terrorist attacks overseas - including an alleged plot to target the Danish newspaper that in 2005 angered Muslims with a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad.

Federal agents arrested Headley, 49, last month at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago as he prepared to board a plane to Philadelphia, where he still has relatives. Philadelphia was a stopover on a trip to Pakistan, according to the criminal affidavit.

In his luggage, he had a copy of the Danish newspaper's front page and a memory stick that included videos of the paper's front entrance.

"Everything is not a joke," he wrote in an e-mail to fellow classmates at his old military school, according to the federal complaint. ". . . Call me old-fashioned but I feel disposed towards violence for the offending parties."

After his arrest, he admitted to the FBI that he was surveilling the paper and Danish troops stationed nearby in preparation for an attack, the criminal affidavit states.

Headley was being held without bail on charges of conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists, pending a hearing.

Unlike some other federal terrorism cases, where the alleged plotters were really only talking to undercover agents, the case against Headley alleges that he was in contact with known leaders of terrorist groups in Pakistan.

According to the charging documents, federal authorities tracked his meetings, e-mail, and phone conversations.

He admitted to the FBI that he trained with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terrorist group, and that he was working with Ilyas Kashmiri, operations leader of another Pakistani terrorist organization.

Indian authorities also suspect Headley, a U.S. citizen, may have scouted targets in Mumbai before the attacks last year that killed 165 people, according to a report in the Washington Post.

There is no evidence of a threat to Philadelphia, two law enforcement sources said last night.

Federal authorities in Chicago also said there was no apparent link to any domestic terrorist conspiracies.

The pending federal case is centered on an alleged plot against the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which angered Muslims around the world by publishing a cartoon in 2005 of the prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.

In phone calls, Headley and the other conspirators called it the "Mickey Mouse project" or the "northern project."

After his arrest, according to the federal documents, Headley told the FBI that he proposed scaling down the operation, from attacking the building to killing the paper's cartoonist and cultural editor.

Headley's attorney, John T. Theis of Chicago, declined to comment yesterday.

Headley, born Daood Gilani, is the son of a prominent Pakistani diplomat and the late Serrill Headley, founder and former owner of the Khyber Pass pub/restaurant at 56 S. Second St.

Serrill Headley, who grew up in Bryn Mawr, split with her husband, and lost custody of her children in Pakistani courts. "In Pakistan, men own the children. There are no rights for women," she said in an interview in 1974.

After 10 years in Pakistan, Serrill Headley moved to Philadelphia, bought a 100-year-old tavern in 1973, and turned it into a bustling nightspot.