Hanged to death: Hijackers trying to stop nuclear tests executed on Youm-e-Takbeer

They had demanded the nuclear tests not be carried out in Balochistan.

HYDERABAD: As the nation marked Youm-e-Takbeer, the day when Pakistan tested its nuclear device in 1998, the terrorists who could have potentially thwarted the tests were hanged to death. In the Central Jail Hyderabad, Shasawar Baloch and Sabir Baloch, two of the three hijackers of the PK-554 flight, were brought to the gallows after 4am and put to death at 4:30am.

The third hijacker, Shabbir Baloch, was hanged in Karachi, simultaneously. The Anti-Terrorism Court, Hyderabad, had issued their black warrants on May 21, days after the presidency turned down their mercy pleas after keeping them pending for almost 15 years.

After hijacking the Fokker F-27 plane, which was carrying 33 passengers and five crew members to Karachi from Gwadar, they had demanded that the nuclear tests not be conducted in Balochistan.

The security establishment had considered the incident a manoeuver by hostile countries to prevent Pakistan from testing the atomic bombs.

The hijackers had ordered the pilot to take the flight to Delhi. However, the flight captain, Uzair Khan, had outsmarted them by landing the aircraft in Hyderabad and also making them believe it was the Indian city of Hyderabad Deccan.

The negotiations, which preceded the security operation, also led them to believe that an Indian bureaucrat, the then deputy commissioner Suhail Akbar Shah, and police officers had engaged with them.

Hanging

Prisons DIG Muzaffar Alam Siddiqi, jail superintendent Ziaur Rehman, medical officer Ahmed Ali Zardari and the civil judge and judicial magistrate VI Junaid Ahmed Memon witnessed the execution as the hangman Badruzzaman pulled down the lever.

Both the convicts were hanged at the same time on separate gallows, connected to a common lever. First Shahsawar and then Sabir," said the jailer. Hours later, the corpse of Shahsawar was handed over to his son, Humayun Baloch, and Sabir's to his brother, Aijaz Baloch. The former's body was taken for burial rights to Mirpurkhas and the latter was buried in Hyderabad.

Meanwhile, the security inside and outside the prison was beefed up with additional deployment of the police and Rangers personnel. This is the first hanging in the prison after a lapse of over eight years and the second since 1999. A triple-murder convict, Muhammad Sharif Chishti, was hanged on January 17, 2007, more than seven years after Fazal Muhammad Chang's hanging on September 16, 1999, according to Rehman.

On Wednesday, the families of both the prisoners were allowed to meet them. Shahsawar's daughter, Hajra, burst into tears while talking to the media outside the prison. "I love my father. I wish he was granted the mercy plea." The convict's son Humayun, told the media that his father believed "whatever he did was to highlight the case of Balochistan".

Published in The Express Tribune, May 29^th, 2015.