It was round 8:30 or 9 within the night on the final day of 1999. I used to be in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, and was visiting a fellow Bihari good friend, Tabish Khair – now a longtime novelist and poet – to have a good time the New 12 months festivities. Whereas ready for others to prepare, I switched on the TV to get an replace on IC 814, an Indian Airways aircraft hijacked eight days earlier with 155 passengers on board. The information was that the horrible saga had ended, and all passengers had been freed. However, in fact, their freedom was secured in alternate for the discharge of three terrorists. 

Two of them launched from jail had been identified in India – Maulana Masood Azhar (founding father of terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed) and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar (Al Umar Mujahideen). However besides the police and intelligence businesses, only some had heard of the third particular person: Omar Saeed Sheikh. Simply two years later, Sheikh would develop into notorious worldwide for kidnapping and beheading a US journalist. He additionally practically brought about a diplomatic disaster between India and Pakistan following the November 26 terror assaults in Mumbai in 2008.

The Kidnapping Of three Westerners

The Netflix internet sequence IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack has sparked an argument over names and the portrayal of some of the hijackers. However it has taken me again to my likelihood encounter with Sheikh. 

The yr was 1994. My cameraman and I had been out to cowl a narrative for a Delhi-based TV channel; it was going by way of dry runs earlier than the launch. We had barely reached Ghaziabad after we witnessed elaborate safety preparations outdoors a non-public hospital. The street was cordoned off. We had been advised {that a} terrorist was admitted to the hospital after being wounded in a police encounter in Saharanpur the earlier night time, throughout which a police inspector had been shot lifeless.

Safety was tighter contained in the hospital. However some smooth-talking with an amiable Uttar Pradesh ‘daroga ji‘ did the trick. He allowed us in on the situation that we might temporary him on our dialog with the person inside, Omar Sheikh, whose English accent, he admitted, he didn’t perceive. We rolled the digital camera as we entered the room, not understanding who Sheikh was and the way large a catch he was for the police. The one piece of data we had was that the injured man had kidnapped three Britons and an American in Delhi and hid them in a home in Saharanpur on their option to Kashmir. He had advised his captives that his identify was Rohit Sharma, and that he was taking them to his quaint ancestral village in Kashmir. However when a Saharanpur police patrol occasion stumbled upon the captives, a shootout ensued. A police inspector was killed, and Sheikh bought injured. All of the captives although had been freed.

Omar Sheikh, The London-Born, LSE-Educated Terrorist

The hospital was posh, Sheikh’s room large and clear. He lay in mattress with a bandage round his proper shoulder. The digital camera was rolling as we got here head to head with a tall and bearded younger man, propped up in opposition to hospital pillows, wanting puzzled and befuddled. His first response was to shout a barrage of questions at us, “Who’re you, why are you right here, who has despatched you?”. 

We requested for an interview, however he refused to talk to us in protest as a result of he stated he had no prior discover we had been going to do an interview with him. He relented after I produced my press ID card. Earlier than the interview started, he advised us his identify and that he was 20 years previous. He was a scholar on the prestigious London College of Economics (LSE). He additionally stated he was born in London and was raised each there and in Lahore. His Pakistani immigrant dad and mom lived in London, the place they ran a garments enterprise. 

Throughout the half-hour interview, Sheikh Omar regarded extraordinarily apprehensive. He advised me he would give something to return to life in Britain. He additionally saved pleading with me, “Brother, take me out of right here, please.” Throughout the interview, he revealed how on the age of 18, he had already performed ‘jihad’ in Bosnia, combating alongside and on behalf of Bosnian Muslims, who, he stated, had been being butchered by the Serbs. He was strikingly younger and his accent was distinctly British. I believed he had the present of the gab. I’m not shocked he managed to lure international vacationers and later, in 2002, used the identical trick to lure American journalist Daniel Pearl into captivity.

Fooled by Extremists

He additionally recounted how he had been indoctrinated on the campus by an Islamist organisation that wished to determine an Islamic society in Britain. He stated he had been fooled by the hard-luck tales he had heard concerning the plight of Muslims and Kashmiris in India. 

Sheikh admitted that he was charged with kidnapping some international vacationers to barter for Maulana Masood Azhar, who was then held in jail in India. He additionally admitted that he had been in Delhi for greater than a month earlier than the kidnapping and was struck by the non secular freedom he noticed. “I had been advised that Muslims in India had no non secular rights and Kashmiri Muslims had been being subjected to torture and rape by the Hindu military,” he stated.

I requested him, if launched, would he return and inform individuals in Britain that Indian Muslims had been free to construct mosques, say prayers, and work in authorities workplaces? He stated he would. He appeared repentant, however clearly not sufficient.

Assembly Masood Azhar

Why Omar Sheikh selected the trail of destruction was laborious to say. He was uncovered to Islamist extremism at a young age. However that does not totally clarify the trail he selected early in his life. He was privileged. He went to the non-public Forest College in London – the identical faculty former cricketer Nasser Hussain studied in. However whereas Sheikh turned a terrorist, Hussain went on to develop into the captain of the England cricket crew. 

At LSE, Sheikh was identified for his tutorial brilliance, particularly in maths and economics. However he dropped out earlier than finishing his diploma to hitch the ‘jihad’ in Bosnia. It’s reported that he met a few Pakistani “fighters” there, who launched him to Maulana Masood Azhar upon his return to Pakistan. He skilled in each Pakistan and Afghanistan.

After his launch, it is unclear the place Sheikh went in Pakistan. In response to some Pakistani papers, he lived in Lahore, the place he married a neighborhood girl and had a toddler.

Till this time, Omar Sheikh was identified largely to Indian investigators and intelligence communities. His identify cropped up on the time of his launch in December 1999 from Tihar, however outdoors of India, he remained unknown. 

The Kidnapping Of Daniel Pearl

That modified after the kidnapping of American journalist Daniel Pearl. Immediately, everybody wished to know who Sheikh was. A international media outlet revealed my encounter with him, and I used to be inundated with requests for interviews by the Western media. 

Sheikh was discovered responsible of kidnapping and murdering Pearl. He was given a demise sentence, which was later changed into life imprisonment. In response to a revered Pakistani journalist, who met a jail officer the place Sheikh was lodged, Omar was shuttled recurrently between Karachi and Hyderabad jails, spending a fortnight in every. The officer advised the journalist that it was necessitated by the truth that he used his present of the gab and sometimes solid his spell on jail officers, who would then do him favours, like smuggling cellphones. 

When Sheikh Posed As Pranab Mukherjee

It’s exactly this present that when landed the authorities into sizzling water and led to a close to diplomatic disaster between India and Pakistan. A yr after the 2008 Mumbai terror assaults, Karachi’s Daybreak newspaper ran an investigative story claiming that Sheikh had known as the Pakistani President on the time, Asif Zardari, claiming to be India’s then-foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee. It was reported that he used unparliamentary language on the decision and threatened Zardari with dire penalties for the Mumbai assaults. The English each day claimed, “Omar Saeed Sheikh, a detained Pakistani militant, had made hoax calls to President Asif Ali Zardari and the Chief of Military Employees, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in a bid to intensify Pakistan-India tensions after final yr’s terrorist assaults on Mumbai, investigators have advised Daybreak.”

A diplomatic disaster was averted after the decision was traced to his cell in Hyderabad jail. The cell was raided, and it was discovered that Sheikh used a British SIM card to make the threatening calls.

Regardless of Daniel Pearl’s spouse, Mariane Pearl, writing a e book, titled A Mighty Coronary heart, and regardless of the e book being made right into a Hollywood movie with the identical title, the story of Omar Sheikh stays shrouded in thriller. In dozens of courtroom appearances, he typically appeared affable and charming, however not loads of his terror connections have been confirmed.

Omar Sheikh Is Nonetheless A Thriller

Former dictator Pervez Musharraf known as him a British spy in his autobiography. Omar himself boasted of his deep hyperlinks to Pakistan’s Inter-Providers Intelligence (ISI) in his off-the-cuff remarks to journalists throughout courtroom hearings. He was identified to have good relations with Jaish-e-Mohammed’s Maulana Masood Azhar and Lashkar-e-Toiba’s Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi. Some journalists, who investigated the roles terror outfits performed within the  9/11 assaults, claimed he was an operative of Al-Qaeda.

Omar is being held in jail regardless of his launch order by the Supreme Courtroom in Pakistan. It’s believed the nation has saved him in jail after re-arresting him due to worldwide strain. However some additionally declare that he’s higher off in jail, lest he reveal an excessive amount of.

(Syed Zubair Ahmed is a London-based senior Indian journalist with three many years of expertise with the Western media)

Disclaimer: These are the private opinions of the creator