They were key players in reviving militancy

By Vinay Kumar

NEW DELHI, DEC. 31. The three hardcore militants, two Pakistanis and a Kashmiri, who were exchanged today to secure the safe release of 154 hostages in the hijacked Indian Airlines plane, were key players in renewing the militancy in Jammu and Kashmir and were also behind several cases of kidnappings of foreigners.

While Mohammad Masood Azhar alias Vali Adam Issa was lodged at Kot Balwal Jail near Jammu and Ahmed Umar Saeed Sheikh was kept in Tihar Jail, the Kashmiri militant, Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar was held at Srinagar.

The entire operation to transport the three militants to Kandahar, was marked by secrecy. They were flown to Kandahar this afternoon by the External Affairs Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, after an agreement was reached with the hijackers for the safe return of the passengers.

Mushtaq Zargar was taken to Jammu from Srinagar in the early hours of today, where he was joined by Mohammad Azhar. The two were flown to Delhi in a special aircraft, sources said. Ahmed Umar Sheikh was whisked away from Tihar jail under tight security around 1 p.m.

It was Mohammad Azhar, the main fund-raiser of the Harkat-ul- Ansar (HUA), whose release was crucial. A prize catch for the security agencies, Azhar was a resident of Bahawalpur in Pakistan and the first secretary general of HUA. He was responsible for recruiting and sending regular batches of Kashmiri youth to Pakistan and Afghanistan for training in arms and explosives.

Born and brought up in a family following the Deobandi School of thought, Azhar received arms training in Afghanistan in 1989. He edited and published the monthly mouthpiece of the Harkat-ul- Mujahideen (HKUM) from Karachi. He visited various countries for collecting funds for the HKUM. He went to Nairobi in December 1993 to enlist support for HKUM's demand, asking Pakistan to withdraw its forces from Somalia, where its troops were a part of the U.N. forces and were acting as a `shield for U.S. army' from attacks by `Islamic Forces'.

He was instrumental in inducting Sajjad Afghani into Kashmir through the Indo-Bangladesh border. Azhar came to Delhi in January, 1994 via Dhaka on a forged Portugese passport, to supervise the merger of the two militant outfits - Harkat-Ul- Mujahideen and Harkat-e-Jihad-e-Islami (HUJI), under a new name of Harkat-ul-Ansar.

Ahmed Umar Saeed Sheikh, a 28 year-old Harkat-ul-Ansar militant, is a British national of Pakistani origin. His brief was to abduct foreigners, to secure the release of Mohammad Azhar and other Harkat leaders lodged in the Indian jails. He was arrested on October 31, 1994 and lodged in Tihar jail.

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