Flying the Unfriendly Skies

Is Terror Air open for business?

Ibrahim, the alleged mastermind of the 1993 bomb plot, is possibly the closest thing to a real-life Keyser Soze, the legendary mastermind of The Usual Suspects. Counterfeiting, assassination attempts on rivals in Bangkok, extorting Bollywood film studios, gunrunning to Africa, large-scale heroin smuggling to Europe -- Ibrahim and his violent "D-Company" gang do it all, all across the world. Despite fleeing India after the bombing, he is still alleged to control much of the subcontinent's underworld from exile.

But Dawood Ibrahim is more than just a sinister criminal and narcoterrorist; he is also a supporter of Al Qaeda. On October 17, 2003, the U.S. Treasury Department declared him a terrorist and froze his assets. According to Treasury, Osama bin Laden and his organization use Ibrahim's smuggling routes for a fee. (Treasury does not reveal exactly what Osama smuggles along those routes.) Furthermore, Ibrahim is a financial backer of the Pakistan-based terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba, which continues horrific attacks inside India, including the December 2001 assault on India's parliament. When al Qaeda bigshot Abu Zubaydah was arrested in Faisalabad, he was hiding in a Lashkar-e-Taiba safehouse.

In case you're not worried yet, this journalist reports that Dawood Ibrahim may be "operating an airline from a Central Asian republic." The republic may be Nepal, where D-Company has invested in the local branch of an airline. Granted, Nepal's passenger carriers are not exactly in the market for the new jumbo Airbus. But a drug-running Islamic terrorist with his own airline? That ought to focus the mind.