Pakistani security sources said on Wednesday that al-Qaeda’s ”number three” was behind the alleged plot to blow up several transatlantic flights leaving the United Kingdom.
They also suggested Britain wanted to allow the plotters to try a dry run, without explosives, in order to gather more evidence, but was persuaded to intervene earlier by United States and Pakistani authorities.
British detectives are in Islamabad working with the Pakistani security services with regard to Rashid Rauf, the Briton held in connection with the alleged plot. No decision has been made on whether he will be extradited to Britain.
Abu Faraj al-Libbi, who is suspected of being al-Qaeda’s third in command, after Osama bin Laden and the Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been named by Pakistani security sources as the main planner of the alleged plot, according to Dawn, a daily newspaper. He has also been accused of being in a plot to assassinate Pakistan’s President, Pervez Musharraf, and was arrested last year and turned over to the US.
A security official said: ”There was a mastermind, there was a planner, and there were the executioners.” He claimed the al-Qaeda link to the alleged plot in Britain had been established and that it had been at the planning stage when it was interrupted in London last week.
Rauf, who has dual nationality, is being held for interrogation after his arrest in Bahawalpur last week. He has appeared once in court and can be held initially for 28 days, a process that can be repeated for up to a year.
Further details of his movements emerged on Wednesday night as the father of Masood Azhar, head of the banned militant organisation Jaish-e-Mohammad, which is fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, told Reuters that he had left the movement to join rivals more interested in al-Qaeda’s anti-Western message.
”He was a member of our group, but later deserted and joined our rivals,” Hafiz Allah Bukhsh said at Jaish’s headquarters in Bahawalpur. ”Our cause is Kashmir, their cause is Afghanistan. They are anti-American, we’re not.”
A man claiming to be Rauf’s brother-in-law said that police detained him as he tried to leave the town on a bus to the nearby city of Multan on August 9. Hafiz Mohammed Sohaib said his sister married a man by the name of Khalid Rauf three years ago. Police told Sohaib’s family that Khalid was an alias for Rashid Rauf. Several days after his arrest, police commandos and plainclothes officers raided Rauf’s home and confiscated a computer and identity documents, Sohaib told The Associated Press.
”They introduced him to us as Rashid Rauf,” said Sohaib, who teaches at an Islamic seminary, or madrassa. He said Rauf had never attended the madrassa and would pray five times daily at home with his two children. ”We cannot believe that he can do anything like this of which he is accused,” he said, adding that he knew him only as a refrigerator salesman.
In London, district judges on Wednesday night gave anti-terrorist police extensions to continue holding 23 of the 24 suspects arrested in London, High Wycombe and Birmingham last week. A 25th person, arrested on Tuesday by Thames Valley police, was released without charge on Wednesday night. Another suspect was released last week. — Guardian Unlimited Â