JNN 17.10.10 A media report says that US intelligence officials were aware of plans to attack Mumbai years before the terrorist incident killed more than 170 people in India’s main port city in 2008.

A report published by the Washington Post on Wednesday said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had been tipped off in 2005 about an American national, who masterminded attacks on the Indian financial hub three years later.

The man identified as David Coleman Headley underwent intensive training with banned militant groups in Pakistan, the report added.

Based on the report, Headley’s wife told FBI agents that her husband was in close contact with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group blamed by India for the deadly attacks on Mumbai.

The report also says Headley went to Mumbai five times to scout landmark locations and targets for the attack on the city.

The report comes months after the Pakistani interior ministry suggested that the Mumbai attack were planned outside Pakistan.

“An initial probe conducted by a three-member team set up by the Interior Ministry has concluded that the 26/11 attacks were planned outside Pakistan,” Pakistan’s Dawn News quoted unnamed sources as saying in 2009.

The British intelligence service, MI5, however, had earlier said that it had uncovered links between the terrorists involved in the Mumbai attacks and UK nationals.

“We have looked at individuals’ communications, where they have been and so on and found they have got connections with most countries including the UK…,” said MI5 Director General Jonathan Evans in early January 2009.

Pakistan has rejected the involvement of its government in the attacks, saying that “non-state actors” were involved in the incident.

Relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors have soured since the incident.

Whlie even in previous reports of UK based newspapers it was said that the Attacker were not Pakistani , but they were from Britian and were even trained by British Intelligence agencies.

As per the reports published in the following Papers on Saturday, November 29, 2008

Both the  Daily Express  and the Daily Star assure their readers that British citizens were involved in the Mumbai terrorist attacks. Under the headline”Brit terror nuts shoot girl, 13, dead” the Starreports:

“The Mumbai massacre that left more than 150 people dead was carried out by Brits, it emerged last night. Police from the UK and India are probing claims that up to seven of the assassins, whose victims included a 13-year-old girl, travelled from the UK.

“Indian security forces said at least two of the captured terrorists were British-born Pakistanis, while the total number could be as many as seven. In a sick twist, they are thought to have possible links to Yorkshire towns where the 7/7 outrages were plotted.

“Last night UK police were using hi-tech computer software to link images of up to 25 gunmen to known Islamic fanatics.”

Read on, however, and you find Gordon Brown quoted as saying: “At no point has the Prime Minister of India suggested to me there is evidence at this stage of any terrorist of British origins.” And an unnamed security source states that there is “no specific information” linking suspects to the UK.

Which, of course, doesn’t prevent the Star and Express using this tragedy to publish scaremongering headlines as part of their propaganda campaign against the UK’s Muslim communities.

Nor is this malicious reporting restricted to Richard Desmond’s rags. The Daily Mirror  goes with “Seven Mumbai gunmen are from ‘Leeds and Hartlepool'”, while the Independent  takes the opportunity to run a story entitled “British Muslims have become a mainstay of the global ‘jihad'”.