CHICAGO, Jan 14, 2010 (AFP) - A Chicago businessman was charged Thursday with helping an old friend from military school in Pakistan plot the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai last year, officials
said.

Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a 49-year-old born in Pakistan, has been held in jail since his October arrest on charges of helping plot an attack on the Danish newspaper that published incendiary cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in
2005.

Prosecutors allege that Rana, a Canadian citizen, helped his friend David Coleman Headley, a key suspect in the Mumbai attacks, by allowing him to use his immigration company as a cover for surveillance trips to India and
Denmark.

Rana was charged Thursday with three separate counts of providing material support: for the Mumbai attacks; for the Denmark terror plot; and for the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Also indicted on conspiracy charges related to the Denmark plot were Ilyas Kashmiri, an alleged terror kingpin in Pakistan who prosecutors accuse of being in regular contact with Al-Qaeda leaders, and Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, a retired major in the Pakistani military. Neither man is in US custody.

Headley, 49, has pleaded not guilty to 12 terrorism related charges and remains in custody where he is cooperating with prosecutors.

The Washington-born son of a former Pakistani diplomat and American mother, Headley reportedly befriended Bollywood stars and even dated an actress during his lengthy surveillance trips to Mumbai.

Nearly a year after the bloody 60-hour siege which began November 26, 2008, Headley was allegedly recorded discussing five future targets.

Prosecutors said the targets included: Bollywood; the Indian temple Somnath; the National Defense College in Delhi; Shiv Sena, a political party in India with roots in Hindu nationalism; and the Danish newspaper.

Headley and Rana were arrested in October on terror charges related to the plot to attack Denmark's highest circulating daily, Jyllands-Posten, and kill an editor and the cartoonist.

Headley was charged last month with spending two years casing out Mumbai, even taking boat tours around the city's harbor to scope out landing sites for the attackers.

Rana, who owns the Chicago-based First World Immigration Services that Headley allegedly used as a cover, insists that he is a pacifist who was "duped" by his friend. A date has not yet been set for Rana's arraignment.