The US Supreme Court on Saturday cleared the way for Tahawwur Rana, a Pakistani-Canadian national, to be extradited to India, marking a significant step forward in the prosecution of those involved in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
Rana is currently detained in Los Angeles, awaiting extradition. India intends to prosecute him for his suspected involvement in the attacks. On November 13, Rana filed a “petition for writ of certiorari” with the US Supreme Court. “Petition DENIED,” the Supreme Court declared. Certiorari is essentially a mechanism for reviewing a lower court’s decision.
Rana, who had challenged his extradition through various legal avenues, had his last appeal denied by the Supreme Court. The court’s decision comes after he lost earlier battles in multiple federal courts, including the US Court of Appeals.
The 63-year-old was a childhood friend of David Headley, a US citizen who was born to an American mother and a Pakistani father, and was arrested in October 2009 by US authorities and sentenced to 35 years in prison for his involvement in the Mumbai attacks.
Rana was captured by US authorities shortly after Headley was apprehended at Chicago’s O’Hare airport in October 2009. He was convicted in Chicago in 2011 of providing material assistance to the LeT for the India attack as well as backing an unfulfilled plot to target the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which published cartoons of the Prophet in 2005. However, jurors in the United States cleared Rana of a more serious charge: giving assistance for the Mumbai attacks.
In 2011, the NIA filed a chargesheet against nine persons, including Rana, for planning and carrying out the attack. In 2014, a Sessions Court in Delhi issued new non-bailable warrants against the men, whom the NIA had designated as absconders.
Rana’s extradition was a major topic of discussion throughout the meeting, which lasted around three hours. The negotiations centered on the Indian government’s preparations and logistics for extradition, as well as Rana’s incarceration arrangements once he arrives.
The encounter came after the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied Rana’s request for a rehearing in his extradition case on September 23. The previous month, on August 15, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California upheld the District Court’s denial of Rana’s habeas corpus petition. It stated that India provided sufficient competent evidence to support the magistrate judge’s finding of probable cause that Rana committed the alleged crimes.
A former doctor in the Pakistan Army, Rana moved to Canada in the 1990s, where he became a naturalised citizen. He later relocated to the United States, where he opened an immigration consultancy, First World Immigration Services, in Chicago.
Rana’s involvement in the 2008 Mumbai attacks stems from his assistance to Headley, who was acting on behalf of Lashkar-e-Taiba. Headley, who conducted reconnaissance on prominent sites in Mumbai, such as the Taj Mahal Hotel and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, was able to operate under the guise of being an employee of Rana’s immigration consultancy.