B-School Professor's Husband Killed; Sociologist Slain in Recent Hijacking

Syed Nesar Ahmad, the husband of a Harvard assistant professor, was among the victims of Friday's bloody hijacking attempt in Pakistan, University officials announced yesterday.

Ahmad, who was returning from a world sociology conference in Bombay, died from bullet wounds inflicted by the terrorist hijackers, said Harvard spokesman Peter Costa. Soon after Ahmad was shot, Pakistani commandoes stormed Pan Am flight 73 and captured the hijackers, ending 17 hours of terror for the 400 passengers on board.

Fifteen people, including three Americans, died in the attack. Another 127 were injured by the four gunmen, who disguised themselves as Karachi Airport security workers and stormed the plane. Two of the attackers, all of whom were believed to be Palestinians, were killed.

Ahmad had gone to Bombay to present a paper on Muslim separatism in India at the conference. "Ironically, Muslim separatists were involved in the hijacking," Business School spokesman William Hokinson said yesterday.

The gunmen originally asked to be flown to Cyprus to free Palestinian terrorists jailed there. The flight originated in Bombay and was headed for New York by way of Frankfurt.

Ahmad, 44 years old, was a graduate of Stanford University and a doctoral student in sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton. Ahmad was a permanent resident of the United States and held a Pakistani passport.

His wife, Assistant Professor of Business Administration Fareena Sultan, age 36, and the couple's 5-year-old daughter flew to Karachi Friday night to recover Ahmad's body, Costa said. Sultan was informed of her husband's death by Pan Am airlines officials and friends in Pakistan, he said.

A close friend of Ahmad's said he was "very involved in the community, very social, very popular."

It was ironic that terrorists brought Ahmad to his death because "he was a supporter of all kinds of people," said the friend, Gazala Sabiq. "Like if someone went on a shooting spree, he would have said, 'Well, maybe society failed them,''' according to Sabiq, who said she knew Ahmad for 11 years.

Sultan, who earned a doctorate in marketing from Columbia, joined the Harvard faculty in August.