FBI was 'warned' about key figure in Mumbai attacks

The wife of a key figure in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which included an attack on the city's Chabat Center, warned US federal agents three years beforehand that her husband was training with a Pakistani militant group, the Washington Post reported.

Citing sources close to the case, the Post said the wife of David Coleman Headley warned FBI agents in August 2005 that her husband had undergone intensive training with Lashkar-e-Taiba and was in contact with extremists.

Headley is accused of having scouted locations for the coordinated attack, which terrorized the Indian city over the course of three days, leaving 166 people dead and over 300 others wounded.

Headley's wife, who was not named in the report, called a terrorism hotline after getting into a fight with him in August 2005, the Post said.

Tajj Mahal hotel attacked (Photo: AP)

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents followed up, and interviewed her three times, the newspaper reported in a story co-authored with journalism foundation ProPublica.

She told agents that her husband "was an active militant in the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, had trained extensively in its Pakistani camps, and had shopped for night vision goggles," the Post reported.

Despite the warning, Headley was able to continue moving freely, travelling to Pakistan, India, Dubai and Europe in 2006, gathering information and material that made the deadly attack possible.

US anti-terrorism agencies did warn Indian counterparts about a possible Lashkar plot to target Mumbai in 2008, but it was unclear whether the warnings were based on Headley's wife's tip-off two years earlier.

Headley, the son of a former Pakistani diplomat and a white American woman, is being held in the United States.

He confessed to plotting the attacks and in exchange for pleading guilty, US prosecutors agreed he would not face extradition to India or the death penalty.

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