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Diary of a Terrorist - Part I
How Black Tuesday suspect Omar Sheikh was sent from Pakistan to New Delhi to free Jaish chief Masood Azhar—all the details, in his own words
IT’S a 35-page note handwritten in English, gathering dust for over five years in the capital’s Patiala House courts. Now it could play a key role in the Black Tuesday investigation.
For, the author of this note is Omar Sheikh, a British national of Pak origin who studied at the London School of Economics and was one of the three militants released by New Delhi in the Kandahar hijack drama in 1999. The FBI is exploring leads that Sheikh could have been involved in the transfer of $100,000 to Mohammad Atta, one of the hijackers in the September 11 attacks in the US.
Sheikh’s note, written in Tihar and part of the records in his TADA case, describes, in almost diary-like detail, how he went about his ‘‘kidnapping mission’’ in India at the behest of his superiors in Pakistan.
His mission: to kidnap a group of foreigners in India and then demand, as ransom, the release of several Kashmir militants, the most high-profile being Maulana Masood Azhar. The mission failed, Sheikh was arrested but five years later he got what he had come for. With Azhar, he was on a plane to Kandahar, delivered to the Taliban by External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh.
ON July 26, 1994, I arrived at Indira Gandhi International Airport. I came by PIA and the plane had left Lahore at 3.00 pm. I went by autorickshaw to Connaught Place. My instructions in Pakistan had been to spend the first night in some good hotel and then contact the two phone numbers I had been given the next day. I was to ask for a ‘‘Farooq.’’ Maulana Abdullah (a Harkat operative in Pakistan) had given me these instructions over the phone.
When I got to Connaught Place, I stopped a passer-by and asked which was a ‘‘good hotel’’ to stay in. He mentioned a few names—one of which was Holiday Inn. I chose to go to this because the name was familiar.
I registered under my own name and gave my passport number. The bill was an astounding $ 210/night. I did not know I had picked the most expensive hotel in town—I thought all Delhi hotels were this expensive and that my money would soon run out!
Therefore I decided I had better contact Farooq straightaway. I phoned both numbers from the hotel. Both answered there was no Farooq there. This worried me even more and I debated whether to contact Maulana Abdullah in Islamabad but decided against it since it would have been grossly against principles to phone head-office from a hotel...
Sultan (an accomplice) took me to a guest house in the Jama Masjid bazaar area. After we checked in, Sultan became much more friendly. I asked him if Mr Zubair Shah (the chief of my mission) had arrived and he said not yet but he would soon. He said he had been very pleased to hear of him coming since they had fought many battles together in Afghanistan.
Back in the guest house, we chatted for a while. Sultan was from Punjab in Pakistan and had instructed several of the lads I had been a co-instructor with. I asked him about conditions here and he said they were not going well mainly because Farooq and he were not getting on—they didn’t know who was in charge between them and they didn’t have clear directions from Pakistan. I asked them what they had in terms of weapons and he said that he had an AK-47 and a couple of pistols. He said that Farooq had a couple of pistols and some grenades also. I asked him where the stuff had come from but he was evasive. Later on I learnt that they had come from Kashmir—but by which route or other details I do not know.
I managed to persuade Sultan to take me to where he lived—the Ganda Nala house in Nizamuddin. At that time Sultan, Farooq and Nasir, a chap who had come via Nepal from Pakistan in order to go to Kashmir, were staying there. We sat down and discussed what our steps should be. Sultan and Farooq wanted to wait until Shah-Saab arrived before starting anything.
I said we should seriously consider buying a house in Delhi. They said that the money that had been sent to them from Pakistan had been taken by some Aswat Darr—who had betrayed after the arrest of Maulana Masood. I said I wanted to see him. They reminded me that the instructions they had received from Pakistan were that I was supposed to do the job I was sent for, namely kidnapping, and not interfere in what they were doing.
(Over the next one month) every place I visited, I analysed from various points of view—as a ‘‘future conquerer’’ as I fondly imagined myself to be, as a social scientist, a traveller, noting down the intricacies of a new country and as an introspector. I went to mosques and madrassas and talked about ideas pertaining to Jihad.
Among the madrassa students, I felt there was great potential for an Islamic movement to emerge but the great obstacle was that the students were generally not capable of independent conclusions—they concluded what their teachers told them to.
Nearing the end of August, I was told by Sultan that ‘‘someone has come - meet me tomorrow at Jamia mosque and we’ll talk with him.’’ I knew it must be Shah-Saab. Indeed it was. Only it was not the smiling, cheerful person I remembered from Islamabad. He had thinned considerably, his first words were ones of reproach. He said all my travelling and talking around had probably gotten us exposed already. He said if I didn’t pull my socks up he’d send me back. He said until we’d started on our mission I ought simply to have stayed in a room and relaxed...
After a few days, Shah-Saab came to the house with Sultan. We all had lunch together and then Shah-Saab said he’d wanted to talk to me separately. ‘‘Your responsibility is the foreigners,’’ he said. ‘‘I’m pursuing the other channels also but the people concerned won’t know about you and you won’t know about them. Remember, American first priority, then British and French.’’
Then he sent me on my first task. I was to go to Agra on a tourist bus noting on the way all the stops it made for refreshments. I was to note the composition of the foreigners at the monuments. This was a reccee mission. At this time, a ‘‘stick ’em up and grab’’ operation was on the cards, since I had explained to Shah-Saab that I had been to many tourist places already and found it difficult to initiate conversations with foreigners, let alone befriend them.
Next morning at about 7.00 am I was picked up outside Hotel 55.
The bus was of a company called Jayco Travels. To my dismay there were no foreigners, only Indian tourists. However, since the bus was only half full, they transferred the passengers to another bus. This second one was air-conditioned and had a few foreigners. Most importantly, one of them, an Israeli came and sat next to me. He introduced himself as Akhmir something. I immediately started working out how I could arrange to meet him later and throughout the day I tried...with no success.
It was late at night when the bus broke down on our return journey to Delhi. All the passengers were worried since there seemed no way to get back. Then a van drove by and I thumbed it to stop. An Iranian couple, Akhmir and myself rushed to it and asked if we could go to Delhi.
The driver and his companion agreed to give us a lift to Delhi. We got off at Delhi about 10 minutes from Nizamuddin. I sent the Iranian couple with an autorickshaw to their hotel and sat with Akhmir in another auto saying that I would get off on the way to Pahar Ganj where Akhmir had directed the automan. As we approached Nizamuddin, I started quarelling loudly with the rickshaw-man. He retaliated and stopped the rickshaw. I told the bemused Akhmir that the rickshaw-man was mad and was asking Rs 500 for the journey and that there was no knowing where he might take us if we didn’t pay. Akhmir hurriedly got off with me. ‘‘Never mind,’’ I said. ‘‘I’ve got a friend near here who can give us a lift.’’
So finally, I brought him to the Ganda Nala house. It was 2 in the morning. I hammered on the door and Farooq opened it. I winked at him. Akhmir followed me up the stairs. I saw that both Shah-Saab and Sultan were sleeping in the room as well as Nasim and Farooq. I woke up Shah-Saab and told him, hiding my excitement, that I’d brought back an Israeli and all we had to do was overpower him. Shah-Saab gazed at me incredulously, peered out of the window and saw the 6’3’’ hulking Akhmir standing there, alarmed at seeing so many bearded men sleeping in one room. ‘‘You fool,’’ hissed Shah-Saab. ‘‘You’ll get us all killed. Take him back to his hotel at once and come back in the morning.’’
Cresfallen, I went to Akhmir and told him that my friend had lent his car out. I took him down, woke up an autorickshaw man and went with him to Paharganj. He was staying at Hare Rama Hotel. I was refused a room because I said I was a foreigner but had no passport. So I went back to Nizamuddin.
Next morning, after everyone had a good laugh, Shah-Saab gave me my next instruction. I was to go to places of tourist interest inside Delhi and see if I could start establishing friendship with tourists. Our next meeting was arranged for Jamia mosque. On the outset, I found the friendship task next to impossible. How on earth do you go up to a foreigner and suddenly become friends? Especially when he has a female partner with him or a dozen salesmen calling out to him. In our meeting at Jamia Mosque, I told Shah-Saab that the only way was the stick ’em up and snatch style. But he urged me to keep trying.
Published in Indian Express. Beginning today, The Indian Express runs excerpts from Sheikh’s note. I will publish those parts in Kashmir section of this site as "Diary of a Terrorist"
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