FBI to seek Indian help to tighten noose around Jaish Chief

[Minstrel Boy]

FBI to seek Indian help to tighten noose around Jaish Chief

Central Chronicle (India)
Monday January 17, 2005

NEW DELHI: A team of US-based Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) will arrive here shortly to gather more evidence against Jaish-e- Mohammed Chief Masood Azhar and his alleged involvement in the kidnapping of American tourists in Jammu and Kashmir in 1995 and his links with the hijackers of an Indian Airlines plane in 1999.

The move comes close on the heels of denial by Pakistani authorities to handover Masood Azhar to FBI, which has also registered a case in the hijacking of Indian Airlines plane IC- 814 on December 24, 1999 and the hardcore terrorist who was among the three released in exchange of the prisoners.

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FBI also registered a case in the 1999 hijacking based on the statement of a US passenger who was on board the plane which was hijacked enroute from Kathmandu to Delhi and was taken to Kandahar in south Afghanistan. Though the presence of a US national aboard the hijacked IC-814 could have spelt trouble for Azhar, Islamabad "rejected the Interpol request for his custody on the grounds that he was not a hijacker and his incarceration in India had been illegal", reports in South Asia Tribune, a webportal run by a senior Pakstani journalist from the US, said.

Besides Azhar, two others released by India then were Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, chief of another outfit Al-Umar Mujahedeen, and a Harkat activist and British national of Pakistani origin, Sheikh Ahmed Omar Saeed. Sayeed was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment by a Pakistan court on charges of murdering US journalist Daniel Pearl. His links with Mohammad Atta, one of the men who crashed a Boeing into New York's World Trade Center on Sept 11, 2001 have been established by investigators who claimed that the 100,000 dollars "transferred into Atta's account was actually provided to Omar by former ISI chief Lt Gen Mahmood Ahmed".
http://www.centralchronicle.com/20050117/1701010.htm


Pakistan rejected FBI, CBI demands to nab Masood Azhar

Express India, Jan 10

Repeated demands by US FBI, the Interpol and India's CBI to nab Masood Azhar, one of the three militants released by India in return for the release of hijacked passengers of Indian airlines' flight IC-814 in 1999, has been rejected by Pakistan, a media report said.

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Islamabad has maintained that those sought by India were "not terrorists as none of them was ever charged, tried or convicted for any act of terrorism", it said. Two of the three militants released in the wake of the December 1999, hijack "continue to be sheltered in Pakistan" despite repeated demands by the Interpol, the US FBI and the Central Bureau of Investigation.
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=40580