Masood vows to end Indian rule in Kashmir

Last week, in an address to hundreds of people outside a mosque in a Karachi suburb, Azhar called for a jihad (holy war) in Kashmir.

Azhar was freed from an Indian jail along with two other militants on December 31 and traded for 155 hostages held captive on the Indian Airlines plane at Kandahar.

He also said that reports of his calling for aggression against the United States in a speech in Karachi last week were not true.

“I have not given any such statement which would be against America,” he said here, about 120 km south of Multan in Punjab province.

One of the other freed militants, Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, a Kashmiri, has returned to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The third, Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, who also holds a British passport, is thought to be in Pakistan but has not appeared in public.

The whereabouts of the five hijackers are also not known.