Canadian charged in Mumbai attacks...

Another charge filed in Chicago...

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.