UK plotters are linked to Indian Airlines’ Kandahar hijackers

NEW DELHI: Strong links are emerging between the London plot to blow up US-bound passenger planes and the 1999 hijack of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar in Afghanistan.

Indian security sources told DNA that Rashid Rauf, key suspect in the London terror plot, and Ibrahim Athar, who led the hijacking of IC 814, are married to sisters.

Athar is the younger brother of Maulana Masood Azhar, released by India after the hijack. Jaish-e-Mohammad, founded by Azhar after his release, played a crucial role in the London plot.

The arrest of Rauf, a Pakistan-born British citizen, exposed the plot.

His links to the Azhar family are now under investigation in both Pakistan and London. Pakistani investigators have arrested two brothers of Masood Azhar. One of them is probably Athar, Indian intelligence sources told DNA.

They said that over the last few years, they had received inputs about Athar travelling to Britain, adding that Pakistani authorities may have arrested Azhar’s brothers so that the conspiracy behind the 1999 hijack does not spill out.

The brothers will not be handed over to any foreign agency, Indian sources believe. Pakistan may also never hand over Omar Sheikh, killer of American journalist Daniel
Pearl, now a suspect in the London plot.  

A senior intelligence officer who interviewed Sheikh when he was in an Indian jail, told DNA, “He knows too much. The ISI would never give anyone access to him.”
When asked about Sheikh’s possible links to the London plot, he said, “Omar is very imaginative, and highly motivated.”

The officer, who has also interviewed Masood Azhar, said that while Azhar is a “traditional” terrorist capable of running organisations and motivating people with his interpretation of Islam, Sheikh is “unconventional and thinks out of the box”.

Amir Mir adds from Lahore:

British authorities believe that since his arrest, Omar has remained in touch with his friends and followers across Pakistan and Britain. Interestingly, Omar was also interrogated after two failed assassination attempts against General Musharraf in Rawalpindi in December 2003, when suicide bombers rammed their explosive-laden cars into the presidential convoy.

Two-other Britain-based militant groups, the Hizbul Tehrir and Al Muhajiroon, which indoctrinate Muslim youths in England to carry out al-Qaeda missions, had been frequenting universities in the UK to recruit young people and ship them to Pakistan and other countries to carry out anti-Western terrorist activities.

The Jaish apparently facilitates them, but refrains from going along with them openly.