Musharraf's pilot wiped out record

ISLAMABAD - PML-N MNA and former chairman Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has disclosed that the pilot of PK 805 ,the plane carrying General (Retired) Musharraf on October 12,1999; wiped out all the conversation recorded in the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and later the conversation record between the Air Traffic Control (ATC) and the plane was also destroyed. In a candid interview at his residence, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, the only civilian eyewitness to the circumstances of the October 12 military coup, informed this scribe that eight years ago, pilot Syed Sarwat Hussain of the PIA flight carrying Musharraf from Sri Lanka to Karachi, erased the 30-minute vital record of the conversation from inside the cockpit. Shahid, who was tried as one of the main players along with Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif in the Plane Hijacking Case by the former Musharraf regime, said every pilot is informed about an alternative emergency landing place, and so was Sarwat informed well in time. He said that the alternate landing place for PK 805 was Nawabshah, as three PIA planes had already landed at Nawabshah airport. He said that Musharraf himself went to the cockpit of the plane and assumed the control of the pilot, asking how the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif could hijack the plane while sitting at the ground. He said that pilot of the plane lied before the court. The pilot, Khakan revealed, failed to provide the record of the conversation. When asked why he did not disclose all that happened eight years ago, Khakan Abbasi said,"No one ever asked about it, so I didn't."