David Coleman Headley, formerly known as Daood Sayed Gilani is a Pakistani-American businessman based in Chicago, accused of involvement with terrorism. Gilani was born in Washington, D. C., where his father, Sayed Salim Gilani, worked for the Voice of America, and his mother, Serrill Headley, was a secretary.
When their marriage broke up, Sayed Gilani went back to Pakistan, taking Daood and his sister with him. There Daood attended the Cadet College Hasan Abdal, a preparatory boys' high school for the military. In 1977 his mother traveled to Pakistan and brought him to live with her in the United States, where he grew up.
Serril Headley owned Khyber Pass, a pub in Philadelphia, and died in 2008. Gilani ran a video store in Philadelphia. In 1998 he was convicted of conspiring to smuggle heroin into the country from Pakistan.After his arrest, he provided much information about his Pakistani drug contacts and got less than two years in jail.
He later went to Pakistan to conduct undercover surveillance operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration. In 2006, he changed his name to David Headley so as to make border crossings between the United States and other countries easier.
He moved his family to Chicago, where he claimed to work for Rana's immigration agency. Rana had been in the Cadet College Hasan Abdal with him. Danyal Gilani, spokesman for Pakistani Prime Minister, is Headley's half brother.
