Terrorist hijackings will become commonplace if tw

Terrorist hijackings will become commonplace if twelve Afghans are cleared of taking over a jet and forcing it to fly to Britain, the Old Bailey heard today (FRI).

The men, who commandeered the plane in February last year and told the pilot to land at Stansted airport, claim they were desperate to escape the vicious Taliban regime.

But a jury was today told that their story could open the floodgates for a wave of copycat hijackings.

Prosecutor Bruce Houlder, QC, urged the jury to convict the men on the grounds that ‘nothing less than the fear of immediate death’ was enough to excuse their crime.

The hijackers, who claim to be members of the anti-Taliban political organisation ‘Young Intellectuals of Afghanistan’, say the ruling authorities in their home country were planning to arrest and kill them for their beliefs.

But in his closing speech, Mr Houlder accused the men of ‘forgery’ and said they had made the story up to wriggle off the hook.

He told the jury: ‘The fact of the matter is that a general fear of the risks you choose to take rather than an immediate threat to your life is not sufficient.

‘To escape from a rotten life, a miserable existence, to escape for high moral causes to spread the word in another land, to flee your country in order to seek political action to bring the misery of your land to an end – none of these things can provide a defence to a charge of hijacking in international airspace.

‘If it was allowed in cases of poverty, hunger and civil war then airplanes would be hijacked only too frequently.

These reasons cannot provide a defence.

‘There are those among the defendants that claim they have been wronged and that they acted under duress.

‘They themselves have shown themselves quite capable of imposing the same kind of duress, the threat of death on others.

‘These defendants have completely lost a sense of proportion about what they did.

However they may apologise to you now and express an overweening self-justification, they have committed a crime and must bear the responsibility for what they chose to do.

‘

The court has heard how the hijackers seized control of the jet during an internal flight on February 5 last year.

They forced the pilot to fly to Britain and demanded political asylum at the point of the gun during a four-day siege at Stansted airport, Essex.

The 173 passengers and 14 crew were minutes from death when the attackers threatened to blow up the plane unless armed police surrounding the plane withdrew.

Ali Safi, 36, Abdul Shohab, 21, Taimur Shah, 28, Muhammed Kazim, 27, Waheed Lufti, 22, Reshed Ahmodi, 23, Nazamuddin Mohammidy, 27, Abdul Ghayur, 24, Mohammed Showaib, 25, Mohammed Safi, 33, and Aminullah Mohamedi, 41, all deny hijacking, two charges of false imprisonment and possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence, and possession of explosives between 5 and 11 February, 2000.

Khalil Ullah has been excused on grounds of illness and will face trial separately.

The trial continues.

ends