On December 31, 1999, New Delhi caved in to the demands of the hijackers and released three notorious terrorists, in a move that was to have far-reaching international consequences. At our insistence, the Taliban informed us on December 26 that the leader of the hijackers was one Ibrahim Ather, whose brother Maulana Masood Azhar was in Indian custody. The hijackers made it clear that their main demands included a huge payment of ransom and the release of Masood Azhar and two other jailed terrorists — Omar Syed Sheikh, a British national of Pakistani origin, arrested for attempting to kidnap western tourists in India and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, a psychopath who proudly listed the names of all those he had killed.

Maulana Masood Azhar returned to Pakistan from Kandahar to a rapturous hero’s welcome. He soon returned to Kandahar to thank Taliban supremo Mullah Omar for his help and to seek ideological guidance from Osama bin Laden. Returning to Pakistan from Kandahar, Azhar set up his own terrorist group, the Jaish-e-Mohammed. Ignoring these developments and the attack in January 2001 on the Red Fort by the Lashkar-e-Taiba, New Delhi chose to invite General Musharraf, who had colluded with the hijackers, for a summit in Agra, with no prior agreement on how the crucial issue of terrorism would be handled. The summit was a fiasco and on December 13, 2001, members of Azhar’s Jaish-e-Mohammed attacked the

Indian Parliament, an attack that led India and Pakistan to the brink of war.

... contd.