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Pleased with the 35-year jail-term handed to Pakistani-American LeT terrorist David Headley, federal US prosecutor said the verdict is a balance between the horrific crime and future incentive to get cooperation from terrorists.
“The object of this exercise at least for us in Chicago was to balance between the horrific nature of the crime and the future investigations we are going to be conducting in their acts of terrorism, another criminal activity and when we approach someone to co-operate with us, what their lawyers are going to tell them, what that they can expect two, three, four or five years down the line when it comes time for them to sentencing. That is what this balance was about,” Acting US Attorney Gary S. Shapiro told presspersons.
“That is why we recommended between 30-35 years, what we believe is an extraordinarily long sentence and with the sentence impose, David Headley would not get out of the prison at least when he is 78-79, but at least it offered some real chance of some meaningful life at the end of that time. And that is the kind of incentive we think we need to do, we need to use to get future co-operation,” Shapiro told presspersons after Headley was sentenced for 35 years of imprisonment by a Chicago court.
Headley, 52, was ordered to serve 35 years, followed by five years of supervised release by US District Judge Harry Leinenweber for a dozen federal terrorism crimes relating to his role in planning the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and a subsequent proposed attack on a newspaper in Denmark.
There is no federal parole and defendants must serve at least 85 per cent of their sentence.
“I do not have the words to describe the pain, the suffering inflicted upon the people of Mumbai, on the citizens of India and citizens of the US and all the others who were killed and injured and the horror in mind that must have been felt by the people in Copenhagen when they learned about the plot. I am not going to even try to convey how awful those crimes were,” he said.
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