LONDON, Jan 18: Nine Afghan men who hijacked a plane from Afghanistan and forcing the pilot to fly it to London in February 2000 have been jailed. Two of the main hijackers Ali and Mohammad Safi, both brothers, were jailed for five years.

Six of their followers were jailed for 30 months each and a seventh for 27 months because he was aged only 18 at the time. The 10th man was acquitted.

The judge said he accepted the group, members of the Young Intellectuals of Afghanistan, had initially been fleeing the Taliban regime. But it had turned into a criminal act after the Ariana 727 plane was forced to fly on to Britain after landing in Moscow. “I accept you were fleeing Afghanistan in fear for your own lives.

“But for that the sentences for all of you would be much longer.” They were found guilty on four further charges of false imprisonment of passengers and crew, and possessing grenades and firearms.

The head of the hijackers is said to be a university lecturer who hails from a Pakhtoon Afghan clan of Safi.

Judge Sir Edwin Jowitt had earlier heard that Prime Minister Tony Blair had received a written plea for leniency from the “Safi Tribe”. The Afghan Ariana Boeing 727 was hijacked during an internal flight in Afghanistan in February 2000.

The pilot was forced at gunpoint to Stansted airport near London, where the hijackers threatened to kill passengers and blow up the plane.

They gave themselves up after a three-day stand-off, Britain’s longest aircraft siege. Of the 156 passengers and crew only 78 have since returned to Afghanistan. The remaining 78, including the nine convicted today, are all claiming asylum and their cases are still being considered.

After one of the most expensive cases in British criminal history, the jury rejected the men’s argument that conditions in Afghanistan were so intolerable that they had no option but to hijack the plane.—AFP