Hijackers threat to 'kill a hostage every 10 minutes'

The hijackers who seized an Afghan jet and diverted it to Britain threatened to kill one hostage every 10 minutes unless their demands were met, a court heard yesterday.

The hijackers who seized an Afghan jet and diverted it to Britain threatened to kill one hostage every 10 minutes unless their demands were met, a court heard yesterday.

The gunmen who held more than 150 passengers captive for three days at Stansted Airport issued the threat after the pilot and flight crew escaped through a cockpit window, leaving the plane stranded on the ground.

Yesterday a member of the flight's cabin crew told a jury how the hijackers became agitated and angry once they realised the pilot had escaped.

The bespectacled 25-year-old steward, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said the nervous calm inside the Boeing 727 turned to hysteria on the second day of the hijack.

Woken from a brief sleep, the steward said he was pushed to the front of the plane where he saw the rest of the cabin crew tied up, and a large pool of blood. "They tied my hands behind my back and beat me," he said. "I felt they had killed one of my friends and I thought it was time for another one to die."

The steward had noted the blood had come from a colleague lying nearby. He had not in fact been killed but suffered a severe gash to his head. He overheard one of the hijackers speaking to negotiators over a nearby radio, demanding the return of the four escaped flight crew. "He was saying, 'If they don't come back, each 10 minutes I'm going to kill one of them'," the steward explained.

The Ariana airline plane had been setting off for a 40-minute internal flight from Kabul on 6 February last year when a group of men armed with handguns, grenades and knives took control. The plane was diverted to Tashkent, Kazakhstan and Moscow before arriving at the Essex airport at 2am on 7 February. It was to be three days before the hostages were released.

The steward had chosen to stay in England and seek asylum since the hijack, the jury heard.He said he had not wanted to return home to the brutality of Afghanistan's Taliban regime. He explained that he had once been arrested because his beard had been shorter than required by the Taliban.

The court heard earlier that most of the 12 men charged with the hijacking claimed to belong to a pro-democracy group called the Young Intellectuals of Afghanistan. They insisted they left the country because they feared "imminent death" at the hands of the Taliban.

The trial continues.