The Prize: Masood Azhar
Maulana Masood Azhar, whose release is demanded by the hijackers, was arrested in 1994 in Kashmir and is lodged in a high security jail in Jammu, reports PTI. He is the key ideologue of a Pan Islamic movement spanning several countries in the region. He is not so much of a scholar as a dreaded terrorist, who has masterminded mass killings in the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir. He believes in "one flag, one Government, one country" in the entire Muslim world, is based in Pakistan and is led by Maulana Fazlul Rehman Khalil. He used to work as a professor at Jamia Uloom-i-Islami in Karachi. The hijackers want him and four others released. Though the hijackers have not named the other four militants, two of them could be Sajjad Afghani and Nasarullah Manzoor Langaryal - close associates of Azhar.
Otherwise soft-spoken, Azhar is known to be a fiery orator who has been supported by various dreaded terrorist outfits like Harkat-ul-ansar and leaders including Osama Bin Laden. He was arrested in Kashmir on February ten, 1994 and sent to a high security jail at Kot lalwal on the outskirts of Jammu. The jail was constructed mainly to lodge dreaded terrorists. The spectacled and heavily built Azhar, is a Pakistani Islamic scholar and one of the top leaders of the pro-Pakistan terrorist outfit Harkat-ul-mujahideen. Harkat-ul-Mujahideen changed its name from Harkat-ul-Ansar two years ago after the United States included it on a list of 30 groups it identified as "foreign terrorist organisations", making it illegal to provide funds for them and denying their members or representatives U.S. visas.
Azhar`s family, in Pakistan, has said he was a journalist at the time he was arrested while in India on a valid visa and that he had nothing to do with Al-Faran. Azhar`s father, Allah Bakhsh Sabir, said four years ago that his son was jailed in India in 1994 for his alleged involvement with Kashmiri rebels after he travelled to India on a visa obtained in Portugal. In an interview on 26 December, he expressed anguish at the hijacking and said he could not believe that his other son, Ibrahim was in Saudi Arabia and could not possibly be involved in the hijacking. However, it is clear that the prize is his son, Masood.
"Indian authorities cannot keep me long in jail, my comrades will get me out," once boasted Maulvi Masood Azhar, according to an article in the Hindustan Times. The short, bearded 31- year old Sunni cleric from Bahawalpur in Pakistan made the boast before a PTI journalist in an interview while in BSF custody at `Papa II` interrogation centre four years ago. The interview took place a week after Azhar, secretary general of HUA, labelled as a terrorist organisation by the United States, was arrested near Kapran in south Kashmir along with Sajjad Khan alias Sajjad Afghani, chief commander of HUA in the Kashmir Valley, on February 11, 1994. Azhar had said he had come to India via Bangladesh on a fake passport to set up advanced arms training camps in remote areas of Doda district of Jammu and Kashmir. In the interview, Azhar had announced in 1994 the infusion by Pakistan of foreign mercenaries in Jammu and Kashmir. "Soldiers of Islam have come from 12 countries to liberate Kashmir. Our organisation has nothing to do with politics. We fight for religion. We do not believe in the concept of nations. We want Islam to rule the world."
Harkat terrorists have operated under various banners in the past to cloak their activities. Some of its members operate under the banner of Harkat-ul-jehad-i-islami The group comprises mainly Pakistani mercenaries operating in the higher reaches of Doda, Rajouri, Poonch and other areas of Jammu and Kashmir. The Hua has been demanding Ashar`s release since ever since he was arrested and has carried out a series of abductions to secure his release. On one occasion in 1995, acting under the name Al-Faran, HuA members abducted 5 foreign tourists. Azhar`s name was on a 1995 list of people the Al-Faran group said it wanted released in exchange for the release of six Western tourists the group said it had kidnapped in July of that year in Kashmir. One of the kidnapped tourists escaped, one was found beheaded and four -- Britons Keith Mangan and Paul Wells, American Donald Hutchings and German Dirk Hasert -- have remain untraced, believed dead. The HuA have also executed Indian military personnel after the Indian government refused to release Masood Azhar. Azhar was secretary-general of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.
Compiled from media reports
27 December 1999
The Harkat
According to the Taliban authorities, the hijackers of the Indian Airlines Corporation (IAC) aircraft, now held at Kandahar, have demanded the release of Maulana Masood Azhar, an office bearer of the Pakistan-based Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), previously known as Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA), who is under detention in India since 1994 and who is known to have been a close associate of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and Somalia before his arrest.
In a report presented to the US Congress in May, 1999, on the Patterns of Global Terrorism during 1998, the Counter-Terrorism Division of the US State Department had stated as follows on the HUM (Text reproduced from pages 67 and 68 of the State Department`s report):
DESCRIPTION
Formerly the Harkat-ul-Ansar, which was designated a foreign terrorist organisation in October 1997. HUM is an Islamic militant group based in Pakistan that operates primarily in Kashmir. Leader Fazlur Rehman Khalil has been linked to bin Laden and signed his fatwa in February 1998 calling for attacks on US and Western interests. Operates terrorist training camps in Eastern Afghanistan and suffered casualties in the US missile strikes on Bin Laden-associated training camps in Khowst in August 1998. Fazlur Rehman Khalil subsequently said that HUM would take revenge on the United States.
ACTIVITIES
Has conducted a number of operations against Indian troops and civilian targets in Kashmir. Linked to the Kashmiri militant group Al Faran that kidnapped five Western tourists in Kashmir in July 1995; one was killed in August 1995 and the other four were reportedly killed in December of the same year.
STRENGTH
Has several thousand armed supporters located in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan, and India`s southern Kashmir and Doda regions. Supporters are mostly Pakistanis and Kashmiris and also include Afghans and Arab veterans of the Afghan war. Uses light and heavy machine guns, assault rifles, mortars, explosives and rockets.
LOCATION/AREAS OF OPERATION
Based in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan, but members conduct insurgent and terrorist activities primarily in Kashmir. The HUM trains its militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
EXTERNAL AID
Collects donations from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf and Islamic States and from Pakistanis and Kashmiris. The source and amount of HUA`s military funding are unknown. (End State Department`s text)
Addressing a press conference at Peshawar on August 25, 1998, Fazlur Rahman Khalil said: " The USA calls Osama a terrorist and President Clinton is claiming that all terrorist training camps had been destroyed in the air strikes. Let me tell the Americans that not even one per cent of the so-called terrorist camps run by Osama have been destroyed. "
In another warning to the US on September 1,1998, he said: " The USA has struck us with Tomahawk cruise missiles at only two places, but we will hit back at them everywhere in the world, wherever we find them. We have started a holy war against the US and they will hardly find a tree to take shelter beneath it."
Opposing the visit of Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Indian Prime Minister, to Lahore for talks with the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Mr.Nawaz Sharif, Fazlur Rahman Khalil said: " Islam`s enmity with India is ideological and not just territorial. More bodies of Indian officials would be sent in coffins from Kashmir on the days Vajpayee visits Lahore."
The volunteers of the HUM, the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Al Badr were used by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Chief Executive of Pakistan, and Lt.Gen. Mohammad Aziz, his Chief of the General Staff (CGS), for occupying the ridges in the Kargil sector before they were replaced by regular Pakistani army troops. Lt.Gen. Aziz, himself believed to be a Sudan (caste) from Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, co-ordinates the contacts of the Pakistan army with the HUM and bin Laden.