Hijackers ‘No Longer in Afghanistan’

NEW DELHI —  The five hijackers of an Indian Airlines jet drove across the desert of southern Afghanistan and crossed into a neighboring country, Taliban officials said Saturday.

The exact whereabouts and identities of the militant Islamic hijackers, who were allowed to go free Friday in a deal with Indian and Afghan leaders that secured the release of 155 hostages on the airliner, remained unknown. The terrorists, who killed one passenger and held the plane for eight days, were given 10 hours to get out of Afghanistan and were last seen being driven away in a van from the airport in Kandahar.

“The hijackers are no longer in Afghanistan,” said Abdullahi Mutmain, a spokesman for the Taliban, the radical Islamic group that controls most of Afghanistan. “They are no longer our problem.”

Many people speculated that the hijackers had headed for Pakistan, which is about 50 miles from Kandahar, and India’s foreign minister implied Saturday that Pakistan was behind the hijacking. Pakistani border guards were placed on high alert Saturday and ordered to keep the militants out, but because the border is porous and the hijackers’ faces were never seen, it was uncertain whether the guards would succeed.

Tariq Altaf, a spokesman for the Pakistani government, said he welcomed the end of the hijacking and had no information about where the militants were heading.

“We know nothing about it,” Altaf said.

The terrorists were believed to be traveling with three militants released by India as part of the deal to end the standoff. The three freed men belonged to guerrilla groups fighting to expel the Indian government from the predominantly Muslim state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Maulana Masood Azhar, a leader of Harkat Ansar--a group now known as Harkat Moujahedeen that is on a U.S. list of terrorist organizations--was the best known of the three. In addition, the Indians freed Mushtaq Zargar, chief commander of the rebel group Umar Moujahedeen, and Ahmad Omar Sayed Sheikh.

The hijacking highlighted the volatility of the dispute between India and Pakistan concerning Kashmir, the main source of tension between the two nuclear-armed countries. The two nations have held part of Kashmir since their independence from Britain in 1947, and both claim all of it.

The five terrorists seized the Indian Airlines jet Christmas Eve after it left Katmandu, Nepal. They took the airliner on a wild journey across South Asia and the Mideast before finally landing in Kandahar on Christmas Day.

Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh said Saturday that the hijackers are Pakistani nationals and that they were bound for Quetta, Pakistan. During the negotiations, Singh said, the Indian government intercepted radio communications showing that the hijackers were consulting a “third force” to guide them through the talks with India.

“Now and then, they would drop the negotiations and go into consultations with a third force, which was not the Taliban,” Singh said. “Based on the consultations, they would come back to us. It was as if a third force was controlling them.”

Singh refused to identify the five men and did not provide any evidence to substantiate the charge. During the crisis, Pakistani leaders denounced Indian claims that they were involved in the hijacking.

The hostage-for-guerrilla swap came under intense criticism Saturday in India, with many commentators saying India’s leaders had caved in to the terrorists. Singh defended the decision as the best under the circumstances.

“National honor and national interests were not diminished by the saving of . . . lives,” Singh said.

While many hostages began recovering from their ordeal Saturday, one passenger, Rachna Katyal, had an especially difficult time. Katyal, 20, and her husband, Rippan, were returning from their honeymoon when the flight was hijacked. The hijackers stabbed Katyal to death during the ordeal. Rachna Katyal, whom the hijackers had separated from her husband, didn’t find out about his death until after she arrived home.

“The news was a big blow,” said Vinod Sikka, a relative.