Delhi cops to quiz Kandahar hijacker on other terror attacks
By IANSTuesday, March 2, 2010
DHAKA - A team of Indian security officials will be here soon to question a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) operative arrested in Dhaka for his possible role in terror attacks in Bangalore, Surat and other Indian cities.
Nannu Mia alias Belal Mandol alias Billal, a Bangladesh national, has admitted involvement in the hijack of an Indian Airlines plane in December 1999. The Indian investigators hope to probe this further.
In December 1999, militants hijacked the Delhi-bound Indian Airlines plane (flight number-814) after it took off from Kathmandu. They forced the aircraft to land in Kandahar in then Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
The Indian authorities had to release four terrorists, including Jaish founder Moulana Masood Azhar, in return for safe release of all the passengers.
Billal, 35, was arrested last Sunday along with four other suspected JeM militants, including Rizwan Ahmed, a Pakistani national who has been coordinating the Jaish activities here for the last five years.
“Rizwan’s job was to ensure safe passage to India for local recruits and Pakistani militants assigned to stage terror attacks there,” an interrogator seeking anonymity told The Daily Star Wednesday.
Rizwan Ahmed has told Bangladeshi investigators that “an intelligence agency in his country” had trained him how to use sophisticated weapons and improvised explosives and later sent him to Bangladesh.
Officials who have been grilling Rizwan said he has admitted to receiving funds from Pakistan, but is yet to divulge the identity of the fund providers.
