Report Quotes Rebel Saying Hostages in Kashmir Dead

Kashmiri separatists killed four Western hostages--including one American--five months after seizing them in July 1995, and buried their bodies in the Himalayas, an Indian newspaper, citing a police report on the interrogation of a jailed militant, reported Sunday.

The account contradicts government claims that villagers continue to see the foreigners in the high mountain area, where several groups are fighting to gain greater autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state.

Government officials were not available to comment on the report in the Indian Express, an English-language daily that obtained portions of the 120-page police report on the interrogation of captured rebel Nasir Mehmood.

Mehmood, 31, is a Pakistani militant arrested earlier this year and held in a New Delhi jail, the newspaper said. It did not indicate the charges against him.

The newspaper quoted Mehmood as saying the kidnappings were carried out by guerrillas of Al-Faran, one of a dozen militant groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir.

Mehmood said the group’s plan had been to kidnap foreign engineers, but, disobeying orders, the abductors seized six foreign tourists instead.

One of the captives, John Childs, of Simsbury, Conn., escaped within days. The beheaded body of another captive, Hans Christian Ostro of Norway, was found a month later.

Mehmood said the four remaining hostages--Donald Hutchings of Spokane, Wash.; Keith Mangan of Middlesborough, England; Paul Wells of London; and Dirk Hasert, of Erfurt, Germany--were executed Dec. 13 last year when Al-Faran became nervous.

In September 1995, Mehmood said, he heard a Pakistan Radio report that Al-Faran and the hostages would not be allowed to cross into Pakistan. He said militant leaders began to squabble.

After reports that Indian security forces were going to attack, some of the guerrillas wanted to sneak back into Pakistan.

Leaders then decided to execute the hostages, he said. They were buried 40 miles south of Srinagar, the state’s summer capital, he said. Indian troops have searched the area but failed to find any graves.