Afghan Plane Hijacked, Lands Near London

A hijacked Afghan airliner with more than 160 people on board landed at Stansted Airport on the northeastern outskirts of London early this morning after hopscotching through Central Asia and Russia.

The armed, unidentified hijackers, demanding the release of an Afghan guerrilla leader, seized the Ariana Airlines Boeing 727 on Sunday morning after it took off from Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.

Twenty-three passengers were released during stops in Tashkent, Uzbekistan; Aktyubinsk, Kazakhstan; and Moscow before the aircraft continued on to Stansted, 38 miles north of London.

The plane was isolated by police and emergency vehicles at the end of a runway as soon as it landed, and police quickly made contact with the hijackers, who were known to be wielding pistols, grenades and knives.

“Contact has been made with the plane, and things seem to be calm at the moment,” Essex Deputy Chief Constable Charles Clark told reporters at an airport news conference. “Our policing priority is clearly and will remain clearly the safety and release of everyone on that aircraft.”

He said there were more than 160 people aboard, including the crew and hijackers. Earlier reports had said there could be up to 180 people on the plane.

Officials with the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist group that controls most of Afghanistan, implied Sunday that Afghan opposition leaders were behind the hijacking.

Taliban officials said the hijackers had demanded the release of Ismail Khan, an opposition leader who has been in Taliban custody since 1997.

Clark said negotiations with the hijackers could take a long time and added, “The position we adopt in this country is that we don’t let them take off again.”

Stansted is the designated airport in Britain in the event of hijackings because it has far less traffic than Heathrow or Gatwick airports.

The hijackers released 13 of the passengers while refueling in Tashkent and Aktyubinsk and another 10 passengers during the four-hour stopover in Moscow, where they demanded approach and landing maps for a number of European airports but would not say where they were headed.

Alexander A. Zdanovich, chief spokesman for the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, told reporters at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport that the hijackers made no political demands there. He said they had asked only for food and fuel and for the plane’s toilets to be cleaned.

None of those aboard were harmed, Zdanovich said. He said the passengers included 20 women and 23 or 24 children. The hijackers freed only men in Moscow, although five women and a child were let off in Tashkent.

Afghanistan has been rent by civil war since 1989, when the now-defunct Soviet Union ended a decade-long occupation. Khan was a key leader of the resistance to the Soviets and later took up arms against the Taliban when it took control of the capital in 1996. Khan was taken into Taliban custody after he crossed the border from Iran with 2,000 troops.

Taliban officials implied Sunday that Afghan opposition leaders, now holed up in a small patch in the country’s northeast, were behind the hijacking.

“These are the same people who want a continuation of war in Afghanistan,” said Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel, the Taliban foreign minister.

Mutawakel said the demand for Khan’s release had been passed to him through intermediaries.

“When the demand is made to us, we will discuss it,” he said.

The hijacking is complicated by the fact that neither Russia nor any country in Central Asia maintains diplomatic ties with the Taliban, which has imposed a harsh brand of Islamic rule in Afghanistan. Russia and the former Soviet republics in Central Asia are strong backers of the Taliban’s opponents.

Abdullah, a spokesman for the Afghan opposition, said it had nothing to do with the hijacking.

“We condemn any act of terrorism,” Abdullah said.

The hijacking of the Afghan plane follows the commandeering of an Indian Airways jet and 155 hostages six weeks ago. That plane, seized by militants in favor of independence from India for the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, spent a week in the Afghan city of Kandahar. The hijacking ended when Indian officials agreed to release three jailed militants.

The hijacking of the Ariana Airlines plane began shortly after 10 a.m., when it took off from Kabul en route to the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

The plane vanished from radar screens before landing in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital.

Ariana Airlines, a state-owned enterprise, has been barred by the United Nations from making international flights because Taliban leaders have refused to turn over Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, a suspected terrorist leader who is living in Afghanistan.

In Tashkent, the hostages who were freed told officials that the hijackers had left their faces uncovered and spoke Pushtu and Dari, both used in Afghanistan. Four hours after it landed in Uzbekistan, the plane took off. It touched down later in the northern Kazakh city of Aktyubinsk after springing a leak in its right fuel tank.

Kazakh officials negotiated with the hijackers, who demanded fuel and food. The plane left Aktyubinsk after the leak was plugged.

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Miller reported from London and Filkins from New Delhi. Richard C. Paddock and Alexei Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau and special correspondent Ismail Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.