A Chicago man facing federal charges of planning a terrorist attack on a newspaper will stay behind bars for now.
As of now, Tahawwur Rana is in federal custody on charges of planning an attack on a Danish publication that printed cartoons offensive to some Muslims.But he and another man, prosecutors say, had prior knowledge of a terrorist attack in Mumbai, India last year that left dozens of people dead.
Charges haven’t yet been filed against Rana for that. When they do, they’ll be based on secretly recorded conversations between Rana and alleged co-conspirator David Headly.
Rana’s attorney, Patrick Blegen, says most of the conversations can’t be understood, with prosecutors misconstruing everything else.
BLEGEN: The government has these preliminary transcripts which are unintelligible as they are intelligible. I think they were kind of reading the transcripts from back to front saying when he was taking about one thing in the end and also in the beginning and it didn’t make much sense to me.
Rana, who has no criminal history, is being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago.