US citizen David Headley has pleaded guilty to finding the targets for the 2008 attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai.

In a Chicago courtroom, he had initially denied the charges, but changed his plea to avoid the death penalty or extradition to India, Pakistan or Denmark, where he is under threat of charges that he attacked a Danish newspaper that published a cartoon showing the image of the prophet Mohammed.

Headley was initially charged in the US with plotting to attack the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten after it angered Muslims with the cartoon.

On the Mumbai charges, Headley admitted to twelve counts of conspiracy, saying he had been partially responsible for attacks on Mumbai that left more than 170 people dead.

Because Headley changed his plea, prosecutors will now be obliged to ask for a lesser sentence.

David Headley was born in 1960 in the US to a Pakistani father and an American mother.

Headley spent much of his childhood in Pakistan where he attended a military boarding school in Islamabad.

He changed his name to David Headley in 2006
before making extended trips to Mumbai between 2006 and 2008, where he took pictures of the targets that were eventually attacked.

He was arrested in Chicago on 3rd October 2009 as he was about to travel back to Pakistan.

Much of his time was also spent travelling to Denmark to pass on intelligence to Pakistan-based Islamic militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Lashkar-e-Taiba has been blamed for organising the Mumbai attacks.