Mumbai plotter handed 35 years in US

David Coleman Headley, who helped plot the devastating 2008 Mumbai attacks before agreeing to become an informer, was sentenced by a US judge yesterday to 35 years in prison.
Headley, 52, struck a deal to avoid the death penalty by pleading guilty to scoping out Mumbai on behalf of Pakistani militants and to a second plot to attack a Danish newspaper over blasphemous cartoons.
“The sentence I impose, I’m hopeful it will keep Mr. Headley under lock and key for the rest of his natural life,” Judge Harry Leinenweber said.
He added that it would have been much easier to impose the death penalty, saying: “That’s what you deserve.” He opted, however, for a 35-year sentence after a motion by the government, saying it was “not a light sentence.”
Heavily-armed militants rampaged through Mumbai in November 2008, killing 166 people and wounding hundreds more over nearly three days of carnage in a prolonged assault on the Indian financial capital.
But US attorney Patrick Fitzgerald had urged leniency, telling the judge that Headley’s decision to become an informant “saved lives.”
In a plot that reads like a spy thriller, Headley spent two years casing Mumbai, even taking boat tours around the city’s harbor to find landing sites for the attackers and befriending Bollywood stars as part of his cover.