Kabul - Osama bin Laden hijacked the services of Afghanistan's national carrier, Ariana, to support his al-Qaeda terror network, it has been revealed.
Bin Laden in effect ran his own private airforce, commandeering the services of the airline to service al-Qaeda's transport needs.
Equipped with airline uniforms and fake Ariana documentation, al-Qaeda operatives could get into any airport the airline flew to.
Al-Qaeda members posed as pilots, mechanics or flight attendants as they travelled in and out of Afghanistan.
And the airline ferried not just militants, but drugs and weapons.
Long before al-Qaeda's volunteers enrolled in flight training schools in Florida, the theme was set.
As a child, Bin Laden was exposed to both the glamour and potential horror of jet flight: his father, the construction tycoon, Sheikh Mohammed bin Laden, was the first Saudi permitted by King Faisal to buy his own plane, a twin-engine Beechcraft.
In 1967, he died in a airplane crash.
While still based in Sudan, in the early 1990s, Bin Laden acquired an ex-US airforce jet, a T-39 Sabreliner, for his personal use, according to Essam al-Ridi, the Egyptian pilot who delivered it to him in Khartoum in January 1993 and who testified to that effect before a US federal court in 1998.
But Bin Laden's passion for flying reached its apotheosis when he acquired his own national carrier.
Ariana Afghan Airlines is not in the same league as British Airways or even Pakistan International Airlines. Before September 11, it owned three Boeing 727s and five Antonov 24s in working order - all very old aircraft.
By the time the Taliban slipped out of Kabul last week, the entire fleet had been destroyed by American bombs, with the possible exception of a 727 at an airfield near Herat.
But as a national carrier Ariana had a proud past and about 1 500 employees. When the Taliban seized Kabul in September 1996, they replaced the airline's top officials on the first day - from the president down - with their own people.
From that point on Ariana was in their pockets - which meant, given the demanding requirements of the Taliban's guest and good friend, that it belonged equally to Bin Laden.
On Monday, the carrier's chief pilot, Sayed Navi Hashimi, 54, revealed in detail how Ariana was used to ferry weapons, equipment and foreign militants from the Gulf to training camps in Afghanistan.
In its heyday, when Hashimi first joined, Ariana flew from Kabul to cities across Europe and Central Asia. "Ariana was the best airline in the region," he said.
When the Taliban took over, scheduled passenger services were cut back, but cargo flights to the Gulf, and particularly to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) - one of the only two states to recognise the Taliban regime - expanded.
"Every week there were 14 or 15 cargo flights to Sharjah in the UAE," said Hashimi. "Most of them were normal flights, bringing TVs, radios, other electrical equipment and cigarettes from the Emirates to Afghanistan."
These passed duty-free into Afghanistan and were then smuggled into Pakistan and sold at huge illicit markets there.
"But sometimes we were bringing other things - we had a station manager at Sharjah who was a mullah and had a lot of connections with some sheikhs. We flew to Sharjah and took on cargo in big heavy wooden crates. It is not a pilot's responsibility to know what is inside the cargo he is carrying, but they looked like boxes in which weapons and ammunition are carried. We also took on tyres for helicopters, jet oil and spare engine parts.
"All our flights were overnight. We went off for rest and when we came back the aircraft was already loaded. When we landed at Kandahar, the plane was taken over to the military side of the airport for unloading."
As Ariana's commercial passenger schedule came close to collapsing under the pressure of ferrying cargo around the region at short notice, Ariana began flying al-Qaeda militants in and out of Afghanistan.
"We brought all nationalities from the Gulf to Afghanistan; Chechens, Arabs and others," said Hashimi.
Many al-Qaeda operatives also travelled around the region dressed in Ariana uniform. "It was very simple,'' said Hashimi. "In the Emirates you needed only the uniform and a form called a General Declaration, which could easily be duplicated. Sometimes they only wanted to see the Ariana ID card - a very simple card, easy to fake.
"Ariana gave a lot of people these false ID cards. People would come on board wearing the uniform - you'd say: 'Who's he?' and they'd say 'Oh, he's a friend of the minister'. What could you do? We would put his name on the General Declaration. Sometimes we flew with 10 crew, sometimes 27."