David C. Headley Gets 35 Years for Mumbai Attack

Planner of Mumbai Attacks Is Given a 35-Year Sentence

CHICAGO â€" David C. Headley, an American who confessed to helping plan the deadly 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, was sentenced here on Thursday to 35 years in prison, the maximum sought by federal prosecutors.

Balancing what was described in court as a “very heinous crime” and “very significant cooperation,” the ruling came after lawyers for the government and the defense urged Judge Harry D. Leinenweber of Federal District Court to downgrade Mr. Headley’s punishment from life in prison. They said he had cooperated with the authorities and provided useful information about Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based militant group with which he had worked.

“No matter how good our intelligence is, no matter how technologically advanced our investigative techniques are, we need witnesses,” Gary S. Shapiro, the acting United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said after the decision. “And the only way you get witnesses in this world is by threatening to prosecute them and then offering them some real incentive to provide you with that information.”

According to court documents, Mr. Headley, 52, attended Lashkar-e-Taiba training camps in Pakistan between 2002 and 2005. He later admitted to scouting targets in Mumbai for the group before the raids in November 2008, in which 163 people and 9 gunmen died. Six of the victims were American.

After his arrest at a Chicago airport a year later, Mr. Headley pleaded guilty to 12 conspiracy charges over his involvement in the Mumbai attack and a proposed terrorist plot against a Danish newspaper that published cartoon caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Prosecutors said that Mr. Headley immediately began sharing information that led to criminal charges against at least seven other people. He also testified against his co-defendant, the Chicago businessman Tahawwur Rana, who last week was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

In exchange for his cooperation, which is expected to continue while he is in prison, prosecutors also agreed not to seek the death penalty or extradite Mr. Headley to Pakistan, India or Denmark.

But on Thursday, some expressed concern that Mr. Headley was getting more leniency than he deserved.

Standing before the court, Linda Ragsdale, who was injured in the Mumbai attack, fought back tears as she described the gunfire she witnessed at a hotel that was raided in the militant attack.

“I know the sound of life leaving a 13-year-old child,” she said.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 25, 2013, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Planner of Mumbai Attacks Is Given a 35-Year Sentence .