Little blurb I found a while back...
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First, rewind to 1999. On Dec. 24, five Pakistani nationals armed with knives hijacked Indian Airlines Flight IC-814 from Katmandu to Kandahar, Afghanistan.
Led by Sunny Ahmed Qazi, alias "Burger," the hijackers slashed the throat of one of the 178 passengers, a honeymooner, and forced pilots to open the cockpit door.
On Sept. 11, of course, five al-Qaida terrorists armed with knives hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 and steered it into the first World Trade Center tower. Led by Mohamed Atta, the hijackers slit the throats of at least two flight attendants and forced pilots to open the cockpit door. Their confederates, also operating in groups of five and wielding knives, hijacked two other jetliners. Another group of four, reportedly one man short, hijacked a fourth plane.
What's the connection, besides the mode of operation? Plenty.
Burger demanded the Indian government release three Pakistani terrorists from prison in exchange for the airline hostages. After an eight-day stand-off, New Delhi agreed to free Ahmed Omar Sayeed Sheikh among the three.
Sheikh turns out to be one of Osama bin Laden's chief money men. About a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, Sheikh wired $100,000 from Pakistan to Atta from an account in the United Arab Emirates capital of Dubai. Sheikh was spotted in Islamabad at the time the money was transferred.
The $100,000 covered the hijackers' flight-school tuition and airfare, as well as living expenses. Sheikh picked up an unspent residual of more than $25,000 from Atta and three other hijackers in Dubai right before the attacks, then fled back to Karachi, Pakistan.
The 28-year-old Sheikh is a leader in Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (J-e-M), an Islamic militant group. Its founder, Mohammad Masood Azhar, aka Maulana Masood, is closely linked to bin Laden.
In fact, bin Laden is understood to have helped fund the well-financed, well-organized J-e-M, making it al-Qaida's arm in Pakistan. J-e-M also runs terrorist training camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
But don't stop there.
Azhar was freed along with Sheikh in the 1999 India Airlines hostages-for-prisoners deal.
Delhi's capitulation proved a fatal error, as Azhar is now accused of masterminding the J-e-M's Dec. 13 suicide attack on India's Parliament House in which 14 were killed, including five J-e-M terrorists.
And there's more: Delhi police believe that the leader of the suicide squad was none other than Burger, the lead hijacker of the India Airlines flight.
Allies indeed.
I'm feeling oh-so safer under the Bush regime... errr administration these days.
