20000212

Afghan hostage drama gives

way to asylum conundrum

STANSTED: The four-day hijacking ordeal that ended peacefully at London's Stansted airport on Thursday soon gave way to a conundrum over a flood of applications for asylum from lawless Afghanistan.

Of the 165 Afghans on the hijacked jet when it touched down here on Monday, 74 including 14 dependents are seeking asylum in Britain. Home Secretary Jack Straw responded quickly by pledging to take a tough line to avoid Britain's being seen as a soft touch for asylum-seekers.

"We are not an easy option," he said. "I am determined that nobody should consider that there can be any benefit to be obtained by hijacking." Police made 19 arrests immediately after the hijackers and passengers walked across the tarmac at Stansted airport in the early hours of the morning, ending the longest hijacking on British soil.

Chief Constable David Stevens said the 19 were arrested "on suspicion of having committed an offence, of being involved in some way with the arrival of the aircraft at this airport". Another two people were arrested later.

Police discovered four handguns, five knives, one knuckleduster, two detonators and two grenades without fuses on the plane.

As indications pointed to a bizarre and orchestrated mass exodus from Afghanistan, Straw told parliament: "The surrender from the plane was unconditional. We will respond resolutely to any attempts like this to use terrorist methods, whether the aim is to advance a political cause or to benefit the individuals concerned".

He reiterated police assurances that no guarantees on asylum or any other matter had been given to the hijackers, while promising to personally determine the asylum applications.

Subject to legal proceedings, however, "I would wish to see removed from this country all those on the plane as soon as reasonably practicable," he said.

Nicholas Blake, a lawyer specialising in asylum issues, told British television: "If there is no place where these people could be returned with safety and dignity, free from the risk of being sent back to a place where pretty appalling things can happen to them, then they have to be permitted to stay here under our international obligations".

Those directly implicated in the hijacking would almost certainly face execution at the hands of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime.

The European envoy of the Taliban regime said that innocent passengers released from the plane had nothing to fear by returning home, but the sky pirates could face death.

If sent back to Afghanistan, "Punishment will be according to the (Islamic) law of Sharia, which is death," said General Rahmatullah Safi, who was present at Stansted throughout the hijacking ordeal.

The passengers, however, need not be afraid of going home even if they had applied for asylum here, he said.

Hostages released earlier on the jet's odyssey to Britain via Central Asia and Russia suggested the hijacking could be an audacious asylum bid, with the pirates in cahoots with a 40-strong 'wedding party' aboard the plane.

Afghanistan is one of the top sources of asylum seekers coming to Britain, with refugee status being granted in about one-third of the cases. An average of 360 applications a month have been lodged in Britain by Afghans since October.ÑAFP