As investigators probe the possible links between the IC-814 hijack and the December 13 attack on Parliament, the dust is being brushed off the confessional statement of Abdul Latif, the hijackers’ alleged pointman who was arrested in Mumbai even before the hostages were released in Kandahar on New Year’s Eve 1999. Latif’s confessional statement to the CBI, accessed by The Indian Express, fleshes out the details of a conspiracy which involved a crucial meeting in the Kathmandu Zoo—coincidentally on December 13—a draw of lots to decide who would take arms into the airport and how greasing of palms of officials and agents ensured that the terrorists could pull off their hijack.


What links do these have to the December 13 attack isn’t clear yet but it is evident that both groups turned a porous and pliable system to their advantage and used identical hawala channels for funding their missions of terror.
While in the Parliament case, it is Afzal and Shaukat who are doing the talking, the crucial evidence in the Kandahar case came with Latif’s arrest. His statement confirms that it was the top brass of the Harkat-ul-Ansar (later Harkat-ul-Mujahideen), Fazlur Rehman and Farooq Kashmiri, who masterminded the hijack with a singular aim: to free ideologue Maulana Masood Azhar—he was arrested in 1994—from the Kot Bhalwal Jail in Jammu.

Azhar, later freed by New Delhi in return for the hostages, returned as a hero to Pakistan and within days floated the Jaish-e-Mohammad, which is the prime suspect in the Parliament attack.

Latif is among the three conspirators now being tried in a Patiala court for the hijack and it was his interrogation which gave the CBI the corroborative evidence it needed.
The document details how Latif was initiated into the Harkat way back in 1995 by Farooq Kashmiri and how during one of his first visits to Pakistan, he was briefed on the importance of Masood. There are many revelations about the manner in which the hijackers subverted the security systems as they moved about freely from India to Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal.

In Bangladesh, labourers crossing into Pakistan would ‘‘sell’’ their identities for as little as Rs 15,000 so that militants could use these to get their passports issued. And on the Indo-Nepal border, it was a little money paid to security personnel, that saw them through.


Latif claims he received arms training both in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was in 1998 that he first came in touch with Sunny Ahmed Qazi, or the ‘‘Burger’’ of the hijack, as well as Maulana Masood’s relatives who played a pivitol role—Abdul Rauf, Maulana’s brother and Yusuf Azhar, his brother-in-law.