It was around 8:30 or 9 in the evening on the last day of 1999. I was in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, and was visiting a fellow Bihari friend, Tabish Khair – now an established novelist and poet – to celebrate the New Year festivities. While waiting for others to get ready, I switched on the TV to get an update on IC 814, an Indian Airlines plane hijacked eight days earlier with 155 passengers on board. The news was that the terrible saga had ended, and all passengers had been freed. But, of course, their freedom was secured in exchange for the release of three terrorists. 

Two of them released from jail were known in India – Maulana Masood Azhar (founder of terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed) and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar (Al Umar Mujahideen). But except the police and intelligence agencies, only a few had heard of the third person: Omar Saeed Sheikh. Just two years later, Sheikh would become infamous worldwide for kidnapping and beheading a US journalist. He also nearly caused a diplomatic crisis between India and Pakistan following the November 26 terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008.

The Kidnapping Of 3 Westerners

The Netflix web series IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack has sparked a controversy over names and the portrayal of a few of the hijackers. But it has taken me back to my chance encounter with Sheikh. 

The year was 1994. My cameraman and I were out to cover a story for a Delhi-based TV channel; it was going through dry runs before the launch. We had barely reached Ghaziabad when we witnessed elaborate security arrangements outside a private hospital. The road was cordoned off. We were told that a terrorist was admitted to the hospital after being wounded in a police encounter in Saharanpur the previous night, during which a police inspector had been shot dead.

Security was tighter inside the hospital. But some smooth-talking with an amiable Uttar Pradesh ‘daroga ji‘ did the trick. He allowed us in on the condition that we would brief him on our conversation with the man inside, Omar Sheikh, whose English accent, he admitted, he did not understand. We rolled the camera as we entered the room, not knowing who Sheikh was and how big a catch he was for the police. The only piece of information we had was that the injured man had kidnapped three Britons and an American in Delhi and hid them in a house in Saharanpur on their way to Kashmir. He had told his captives that his name was Rohit Sharma, and that he was taking them to his quaint ancestral village in Kashmir. But when a Saharanpur police patrol party stumbled upon the captives, a shootout ensued. A police inspector was killed, and Sheikh got injured. All the captives though were freed.

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

The hospital was posh, Sheikh’s room big and clean. He lay in bed with a bandage around his right shoulder. The camera was rolling as we came face to face with a tall and bearded young man, propped up against hospital pillows, looking puzzled and befuddled. His first reaction was to shout a barrage of questions at us, “Who are you, why are you here, who has sent you?”. 

We asked for an interview, but he refused to speak to us in protest because he said he had no prior notice we were going to do an interview with him. He relented after I produced my press ID card. Before the interview began, he told us his name and that he was 20 years old. He was a student at the prestigious London School of Economics (LSE). He also said he was born in London and was raised both there and in Lahore. His Pakistani immigrant parents lived in London, where they ran a clothes business. 

During the half-hour interview, Sheikh Omar looked extremely worried. He told me he would give anything to return to life in Britain. He also kept pleading with me, “Brother, take me out of here, please.” During the interview, he revealed how at the age of 18, he had already done ‘jihad’ in Bosnia, fighting alongside and on behalf of Bosnian Muslims, who, he said, were being butchered by the Serbs. He was strikingly young and his accent was distinctly British. I thought he had the gift of the gab. I am not surprised he managed to lure foreign tourists and later, in 2002, used the same trick to lure American journalist Daniel Pearl into captivity.

Fooled by Extremists

He also recounted how he had been indoctrinated on the campus by an Islamist organisation that wanted to establish an Islamic society in Britain. He said he had been fooled by the hard-luck stories he had heard about the plight of Muslims and Kashmiris in India. 

Sheikh admitted that he was charged with kidnapping some foreign tourists to barter for Maulana Masood Azhar, who was then held in prison in India. He also admitted that he had been in Delhi for more than a month before the kidnapping and was struck by the religious freedom he saw. “I had been told that Muslims in India had no religious rights and Kashmiri Muslims were being subjected to torture and rape by the Hindu army,” he said.

I asked him, if released, would he go back and tell people in Britain that Indian Muslims were free to build mosques, say prayers, and work in government offices? He said he would. He appeared repentant, but clearly not enough.

Meeting Masood Azhar

Why Omar Sheikh chose the path of destruction was hard to say. He was exposed to Islamist extremism at a tender age. But that doesn’t fully explain the path he chose early in his life. He was privileged. He went to the private Forest School in London – the same school former cricketer Nasser Hussain studied in. But while Sheikh became a terrorist, Hussain went on to become the captain of the England cricket team. 

At LSE, Sheikh was known for his academic brilliance, especially in maths and economics. But he dropped out before completing his degree to join the ‘jihad’ in Bosnia. It is reported that he met a couple of Pakistani “fighters” there, who introduced him to Maulana Masood Azhar upon his return to Pakistan. He trained in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

After his release, it’s unclear where Sheikh went in Pakistan. According to some Pakistani papers, he lived in Lahore, where he married a local woman and had a child.

Until this time, Omar Sheikh was known mostly to Indian investigators and intelligence communities. His name cropped up at the time of his release in December 1999 from Tihar, but outside of India, he remained unknown. 

The Kidnapping Of Daniel Pearl

That changed after the kidnapping of American journalist Daniel Pearl. Suddenly, everyone wanted to know who Sheikh was. A foreign media outlet published my encounter with him, and I was inundated with requests for interviews by the Western media. 

Sheikh was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering Pearl. He was given a death sentence, which was later turned into life imprisonment. According to a respected Pakistani journalist, who met a prison officer where Sheikh was lodged, Omar was shuttled regularly between Karachi and Hyderabad jails, spending a fortnight in each. The officer told the journalist that it was necessitated by the fact that he used his gift of the gab and often cast his spell on prison officials, who would then do him favours, like smuggling cellphones. 

When Sheikh Posed As Pranab Mukherjee

It is precisely this gift that once landed the authorities into hot water and led to a near diplomatic crisis between India and Pakistan. A year after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, Karachi’s Dawn newspaper ran an investigative story claiming that Sheikh had called the Pakistani President at the time, Asif Zardari, claiming to be India’s then-foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee. It was reported that he used unparliamentary language on the call and threatened Zardari with dire consequences for the Mumbai attacks. The English daily claimed, “Omar Saeed Sheikh, a detained Pakistani militant, had made hoax calls to President Asif Ali Zardari and the Chief of Army Staff, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in a bid to heighten Pakistan-India tensions after last year’s terrorist attacks on Mumbai, investigators have told Dawn.”

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

Despite Daniel Pearl’s wife, Mariane Pearl, writing a book, titled A Mighty Heart, and despite the book being made into a Hollywood film with the same title, the story of Omar Sheikh remains shrouded in mystery. In dozens of court appearances, he often appeared affable and charming, but not a lot of his terror connections have been confirmed.

Omar Sheikh Is Still A Mystery

Former dictator Pervez Musharraf called him a British spy in his autobiography. Omar himself boasted of his deep links to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in his off-the-cuff remarks to journalists during court hearings. He was known 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 played in the  9/11 attacks, claimed he was an operative of Al-Qaeda.

Omar is being held in jail despite his release order by the Supreme Court in Pakistan. It is believed the country has kept him in prison after re-arresting him because of international pressure. But some also claim that he is better off in jail, lest he reveal too much.

(Syed Zubair Ahmed is a London-based senior Indian journalist with three decades of experience with the Western media)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

Muslim pilgrims use umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun during the annual haj, in Mina, near the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on June 18, 2024. Muslim pilgrims were wrapping up the Haj pilgrimage in the deadly summer heat on Tuesday
| Photo Credit: AP

Diplomats on Tuesday said at least 550 pilgrims died during the haj, underscoring the gruelling nature of the pilgrimage which again unfolded in scorching temperatures this year.

At least 323 of those who died were Egyptians, most of them succumbing to heat-related illnesses, two Arab diplomats coordinating their countries’ responses told AFP.

“All of them (the Egyptians) died because of heat” except for one who sustained fatal injuries during a minor crowd crush, one of the diplomats said, adding the total figure came from the hospital morgue in the Al-Muaisem neighbourhood of Mecca.

At least 60 Jordanians also died, the diplomats said, up from an official tally of 41 given earlier on Tuesday by Amman. The new deaths bring the total reported so far by multiple countries to 577, according to an AFP tally. The diplomats said the total at the morgue in Al-Muaisem, one of the biggest in Mecca, was 550.

The haj is one of the five pillars of Islam and all Muslims with the means must complete it at least once.

The pilgrimage is increasingly affected by climate change, according to a Saudi study published last month that said temperatures in the area where rituals are performed were rising 0.4 degrees Celsius (0.72 degrees Fahrenheit) each decade.

Temperatures hit 51.8 degrees Celsius (125 Fahrenheit) at the Grand Mosque in Mecca on Monday, the Saudi national meteorology centre said.

Heat stress

Earlier on Tuesday, Egypt’s foreign ministry said Cairo was collaborating with Saudi authorities on search operations for Egyptians who had gone missing during the haj.

While a ministry statement said “a certain number of deaths” had occurred, it did not specify whether Egyptians were among them.

Saudi authorities have reported treating more than 2,000 pilgrims suffering from heat stress but have not updated that figure since Sunday and have not provided information on fatalities.

At least 240 pilgrims were reported dead by various countries last year, most of them Indonesians.

AFP journalists in Mina, outside Mecca, on Monday saw pilgrims pouring bottles of water over their heads as volunteers handed out cold drinks and fast-melting chocolate ice cream to help them keep cool.

Saudi officials had advised pilgrims to use umbrellas, drink plenty of water and avoid exposure to the sun during the hottest hours of the day.

But many of the haj rituals, including the prayers on Mount Arafat which took place on Saturday, involve being outdoors for hours in the daytime.

Some pilgrims described seeing motionless bodies on the roadside and ambulance services that appeared overwhelmed at times.

Around 1.8 million pilgrims took part in the haj this year, 1.6 million of them from abroad, according to Saudi authorities.

Unregistered pilgrims

Each year tens of thousands of pilgrims attempt to perform the haj through irregular channels as they cannot afford the often costly procedures for official haj visas.

This places these off-the-books pilgrims at risk as they cannot access air-conditioned facilities provided by Saudi authorities along the haj route.

One of the diplomats who spoke to AFP on Tuesday said that the Egyptian death toll was “absolutely” boosted by a large number of unregistered Egyptian pilgrims.

“Irregular pilgrims caused great chaos in the Egyptian pilgrims’ camps, causing the collapse of services,” said an Egyptian official supervising the country’s haj mission.

“The pilgrims went without food, water, or air conditioning for a long time.”

They died “from the heat because most people had no place” to take shelter.

Earlier this month, Saudi officials said they had cleared hundreds of thousands of unregistered pilgrims from Mecca ahead of the haj.

Other countries to report deaths during the haj this year include Indonesia, Iran and Senegal.

Most countries have not specified how many deaths were heat-related.

Saudi Health Minister Fahd bin Abdul Rahman Al-Jalajel said on Tuesday that health plans for the haj had “been successfully carried out”, preventing major outbreaks of disease and other public health threats, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

Health officials “provided virtual consultations to over 5,800 pilgrims, primarily for heat-related illnesses, enabling prompt intervention and mitigating the potential for a surge in cases,” SPA said.

An Indonesian TikToker has been sentenced to two years in prison after she posted a TikTok video where she said an Islamic phrase before eating pork, BBC reported. The verdict came after a resident reported Lina Lutfiawati, 33, for the video which gained millions of views on TikTok in March this year.

In the video, she was seen uttering a Muslim prayer that translates to “in the name of God”, before consuming pork skin. The clip was shot when she was traveling in Bali, and the influencer said that she tried pork out of curiosity. Many criticised her for “knowingly eating pork skin as a Muslim”, while conservative groups across the country issued rulings calling the video ”blasphemous”.

Notably, pork is forbidden under Islam, which is the dominant religion in Indonesia.

Ms Lutfiawati was found guilty of “spreading information aimed at inciting hatred against religious individuals and specific groups” at a court on Tuesday in the South Sumatra city of Palembang, according to the verdict. She has also been ordered to pay a fine of $16,245 (Rs 13,48,111). If she fails to pay the money, her jail term may be extended by three months.

Taken aback by the verdict, she told a local news station that she knew that she made a mistake, but ”did not expect such a severe punishment.”

Notably, Ms Lutfiawati loves Bollywood movies and has also adopted the Indian name Lina Mukherjee. The influencer, who has more than two million TikTok followers, also runs a business in India.

Her case is the latest in a series of high-profile blasphemy convictions in recent years. Last year, six people were arrested after a bar chain promoted free alcohol for patrons named Mohammed, as per an AFP report. 

Usman Hamid, executive director of Amnesty International Indonesia, said the blasphemy article in Indonesian law has been abused to target minority groups and dissenters.