Three Baloch militants convicted of hijacking a plane in 1998, which they attempted to fly to India to disrupt Islamabad's first nuclear tests, officials said. The executions were carried out on the 17th anniversary of the tests, which made Pakistan the world's seventh nuclear-armed power - a landmark event for the Muslim country of 200 million people. Two of the men, Shahsawar Baloch and Sabir Baloch were hanged in Hyderabad prison while the third, Shabir Rind, was hanged in Karachi, officials at both the prisons told AFP.
The trio were sentenced to death for hijacking a Pakistan International Airlines aircraft with 30 passengers on board on 24th May 1998, four days before the country's first nuclear test. The flight took off from the port town of Gwadar and was set to land in Karachi when the men stormed the cockpit and tried to force the pilot to fly to India. But he instead flew to Hyderabad, 160 kilometres (100 miles) north east of Karachi, tricking the hijackers into thinking that they were in India. The next day army commandoes overpowered all the three hijackers in a night operation.
Officials said the executed hijackers were Baloch militants. At the time of the hijacking, officials said that one of the hijackers' demands was for Pakistan not to carry out the nuclear tests which were to due to be carried out in Balochistan. Separately on Thursday, a fourth hanging was also carried out, in Karachi jail, the prison official said. The executed man, Mahmood Ali, had been awarded the death sentence for murdering a three-year-old child in 2003.
Comments
Comments are closed.