Paris attack resembles Chicago terrorist David Headley's plot

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The ABC7 I-Team reports that the terrorist attack on a newspaper office in Paris that left at least 12 people dead seems to have been patterned after a plot by a notorious Chicago terrorist.

The Chicago terrorist David Headley was nowhere near France on Wednesday; he is in U.S. custody serving a 35-year sentence. But whether by coincidence or connection, one of the terror plots that landed Headley in prison is remarkably similar to the one carried out in Paris. Both targeted publications that ran cartoons negatively depicting the prophet Muhammad.

Headley said he wanted to wage war on newspaper executives who had published cartoons offensive to Muslims. On Wednesday in Paris, 10 editorial employees are dead, including well-known cartoonists...and two police officers also killed in the gun attack.

In Headley's case, six years ago, the newspaper was in Copenhagen, Denmark.

"The newspaper that I work for, Jyllands-Posten, published some cartoons that Headley found very offensive," Kaare Sorensen, a Danish newspaper reporter, said in 2013.

Headley and his accomplice, Chicago travel agent Tahawwur Rana, had scouted the Danish newspaper and planned to assault the editorial office, then kill and behead employees, dropping their heads from office windows.

In an e-mail, Headley wrote: "I pray that god would give me the opportunity to catch one of these bastards and cut their throats open, to please him. I feel so much happiness when any of them is beheaded. Nobody deserves it more. I feel no sorrow for their kids or their old and feeble."

Headley was in cahoots with Pakistani terrorists and trained with al-Qaeda. The newspaper plot was replaced in 2008 with a more potent plan: an armed takeover of Mumbai, India, where 174 people were killed.

But the essence of Headley's first plot came to life today in Paris, rekindling concerns that a similar attack could happen anywhere.

"Let us all work together to not only bring justice to this horrible situation - this attack on free press in France - but let us also work together to bring an end to terrorism in our time," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois.

Headley's newspaper office plot was nicknamed "the Mickey Mouse project" in coded conversations between terrorists. Whether the inspiration for Wednesday's attack in Paris came from Headley's plan hatched in a Northwest Side Chicago apartment or whether it is just an incredible coincidence, may not be known until authorities arrest the three men they are still looking for.