Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansoor, the newly-appointed chief of the Afghan Taliban, may have played a key role in the 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines flight 814, officials involved with the case have told The Indian Express. Mansoor, as the Taliban’s Civil Aviation Minister, handled the 1999 hijacking of IC-814 along with its Foreign Minister, Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, and Kandahar corps commander Akhtar Muhammad Usmani. The new Taliban chief, Indian intelligence officials believe, holds information on the role of the Inter-Services Intelligence station in Kandahar in supplying explosives and assault rifles which the hijackers came into possession of while the aircraft was parked on the tarmac. “The hijackers took pistols on board the flight inside a sweet box they smuggled through security in Kathmandu,” recalled former Research and Analysis Wing chief CD Sahai. “But in Kandahar, we found they had automatic weapons, and had rigged the aircraft with explosives. It stands to reason that someone there provided them with these things after the plane landed,” he said.
30/07/15 Indian Express
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30/07/15 Indian Express
