Chicago, January 21: Terror suspects David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Rana, indicted on charges of being involved in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, will be arraigned in a court here next week.
The arraignment of Rana and Headley was initially scheduled for today but have now been rescheduled. While Pakistani-Canadian citizen Rana will be arraigned on January 25, Pakistani-American Headley’s arraignment has been set for January 27 before US Magistrate Judge Arlander Keys in US District Court, Northern District of Illinois, US Attorney?s Office spokesman Randall Samborn said.
Further, a status hearing that was scheduled for today in Rana’s appeal of detention has also been cancelled and not yet been rescheduled, Samborn said.
Chicagoans Headley and Rana were indicted on January 14 by a federal grand jury on charges of being involved in the Mumbai attacks and planning a terror strike against a Danish newspaper in Copenhagen.
The 12-count superseding indictment contains the identical charges that were filed against Headley on December 7 while adding Rana as a defendant in three of the counts charging material support of the terrorism plots in Denmark and India, as well as in support of terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Toiba.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which had sued the federal government challenging the visa ban on these two Muslim professors, termed it as a major victory.
“The orders ending the exclusion of Adam Habib and Tariq Ramadan are long overdue and tremendously important,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project.
“For several years, the United States government was more interested in stigmatising and silencing its foreign critics than engaging them.
The decision to end the exclusion of Professors Habib and Ramadan is a welcome sign that the Obama administration is committed to facilitating, rather than obstructing, the exchange of ideas across international borders,” Jaffer said.
Professor Adam Habib is a respected political analyst and Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research, Innovation and Advancement at the University of Johannesburg, as well as a Muslim who has been a vocal critic of the war in Iraq and some US terrorism-related policies.
“My family and I are thrilled by Secretary Clinton’s decision, and we are thankful to the many organisations that put pressure on the Obama administration to stop excluding people from the United States on the basis of their political views,” said Habib.
“This is not only a personal victory but also a victory for democracy around the world, and we hope this signals a move by the administration to begin restoring the liberties and freedoms that have been so badly eroded in recent times,” he said.
-PTI