NEWSLINKS
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTION 99
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Masood Azhar dares India to prove hijackers were Pakistani

Just when Home Minister L K Advani was releasing to the press in New Delhi the photographs of five Pakistani hijackers of Indian Airlines Flight 814, Maulana Masood Azhar, who was among three militants released in exchange for 154 hostages, said in Karachi: "We will accept all charges of India if it proves that even a single hijacker was a Pakistani.''

Azhar, who is considered to be the ideologue of Pakistan-based terrorist outfit Harkat-ul Mujahideen (earlier Harkat-ul Ansar) warned that cases like hijacking would continue if the Kashmir problem was not resolved. He praised Pakistan's CEO Gen Pervez Musharraf for declaring that he would talk to India only on Kashmir.

It was Azhar's first press conference after his release after about six years from a Jammu jail on New Year Eve. In his anti-India utterances during the press conference he sounded like "his master's voice'' of both foreign office spokesman Tariq Altaf and military spokesman Brig Rashid Qureshi, who is considered to be very close to Gen Musharraf.

UNI

NIGHTMARE ON FLIGHT 814
The complete coverage

Tell us what you think of this report