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Rashid Rauf - Magda Hassan - 09-09-2009
THE CURIOUS CASE OF RASHID RAUF - INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--PAPER NO. 161
By B. Raman
Rashid Rauf is from a Mirpuri family of Birmingham. The Mirpuris are the Punjabi-speaking residents of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). He disappeared from the UK in 2002 after the British Police suspected him in connection with the murder of one of his relatives in Birmingham. Their search for him did not produce any clues---either in the UK or in Pakistan.
2. Then, suddenly, on August 9, 2006, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) claimed to have picked him up from a house in Bhawalpur, southern Punjab, which he had bought after coming to Pakistan in 2002. He had married a woman related by marriage to Maulana Masood Azhar, the Amir of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, which was involved in the aborted attack on the Indian Parliament in December, 2001.
3. The Pakistani authorities claimed that he was in close touch with Al Qaeda and that it was his arrest that gave them an inkling regarding the imminence of the plot of a group of jihadi extremists based in the UK to blow up a number of US-bound planes. The discovery of the conspiracy and the arrest of many UK-based suspects were then announced by the British Police. The final results of their investigation are not yet known.
4. Since Rashid Rauf was projected by the Pakistani authorities as the most important player in the plot and as the man, whose arrest led to the unearthing of the planned terrorist conpiracy in the UK, one would have thought that his being handed-over to the British for interrogation would have been of the highest priority to the British investigating authorities. But, no action has been taken so far. The Pakistani media had reported that a team of British Police officers had visited Pakistan to question him, but it is not clear whether Rashid was questioned by them and, if so and if his questioning did indicate his involvement in the plot, why they have not so far moved for his extradition.
5. It is clear from the facts available so far that as with Omar Sheikh, the principal accused in the case relating to the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, in the beginning of 2002, and Dr. A. Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist with links with Iran, North Korea, Libya and Al Qaeda, in the case of Rashid Rauf too, the Pakistani authorities are avoiding handing him over to the British or American investigators.
6. Reliable police sources in Pakistan say that the reluctance of Gen. Pervez Musharraf to hand over Rashid Rauf to the UK or US is due to the fear that his independent interrogation by them might bring out that Rashid Rauf was aware of the training of some of the perpetrators of the Mumbai blasts of July, 2006, in which over 180 suburban train commuters were killed, in a camp of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) in Bhawalpur and that the ISI was aware of his presence in Bhawalpur ever since 2002, when he fled to Pakistan from the UK. These police sources say that the ISI's contention that it came to know of his presence only in the beginning of August, 2006, is not correct.
7. The Government of Pakistan told a court on October 30, 2006, that Rashid Rauf had been detained under the Security of Pakistan Act. A Rawalpindi Anti-Terrorism Judge, Justice Safdar Hussain Malik, passed orders on November 21, 2006, approving his judicial custody in the Adiala jail. This could rule out his early transfer to the British Police for interrogation.
8. Under the joint anti-terrorism mechanism recently set up by the Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan, India should also request the Pakistani authorities for permission to interrogate him on the LET training camp in Bahawalpur. If Pakistan refuses to co-operate, the international community should be informed about it.
9. Extracts relating to Rashid Rauf from some of my past reports are annexed.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: itschen36@gmail.com)
ANNEXURE
EXTRACTS RELATING TO RASHID RAUF FROM MY PAST REPORTS
Musharraf and his officials proclaimed that it was Pakistan, which discovered the plot and alerted the British about it on August 9. They projected Rashid Rauf, a British citizen of Pakistani origin, as the chief co-ordinator of the plot on behalf of the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. What strip-tease they have been playing about Rashid Rauf! They said he was arrested while crossing into Pakistan from Afghanistan a week before the British announcement. Sections of the Pakistani media reported that he was actually arrested in Bahawalpur in southern Punjab on August 8. He had acquired an expensive house there and married the sister-in-law (wife's sister) of Maulana Masood Azhar, the Amir of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), which was designated by the US as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in December, 2001.
After the publication of the report of his arrest in Bahawalpur, the Pakistani officials changed their version. They said they had actually arrested an associate of Rashid Rauf while crossing over into Pakistan from Afghanistan and he led them to Rashid in Bahawalpur. They have not given the name of this associate. They said that the entire plot was conceived by the No.3 of Al Qaeda who, according to them, is based in Afghanistan, but they could not give his name except to say he was close to No.2 Zawahiri. Then, they said it was actually a son-in-law of Zawahiri, who conceived the plot and tried to use Rashid to have it executed. They gave the name of the so-called son-in-law. When it was pointed out to them that this son-in-law was reported by them earlier this year to have been killed in an American air raid in the Bajaur tribal agency, they have gone silent. Musharraf has advised his agencies not to give any more briefings to the media. Musharraf has suddenly become a stickler for the law. In the past, the Pakistani authorities had informally handed over to the Americans without following the due process of the law Mir Aimal Kansi, Ramzi Yousef, Abu Zubaidah, Ramzi Binalshib, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Abu Faraj al-Libi and many others without informing their courts about their arrests. Abu Faraj was handed over despite the fact that he was the principal accused in the case relating to the plot to kill Musharraf in December,2003. In the case of Rashid Rauf, they are following the entire procedure as laid down in the law. They informed a court of his arrest. They produced him before a magistrate and obtained his remand in police custody for interrogation. They have reportedly requested the British for a formal written application for handing him over so that they can put it up to the Magistrate for orders. A British police team is waiting in Islamabad patiently for an opportunity to question him. Any police would have been anxious to question him as urgently as possible in order to neutralise any other threat before it materialises, but not the British. It is now 10 days since the plot was discovered, but the British are yet to interrogate the so-called principal co-ordinator of it. They are showing remarkable patience. It is like a clip in slow motion from a Charlie Chaplin movie. The whole case relating to Rashid is moving at a pace which would make the proverbial snail look a great sprinter. Rashid Rauf may well go down in history as the terrorist, whom nobody wanted to interrogate. The Pakistanis don't want to interrogate him too much lest their duplicity be exposed.The British and the Americans don't want to be in a hurry to interrogate lest their own gullibility be exposed.Moreover, there is a great danger if it comes out that they again let themselves be taken for a ride by Musharraf.Not only will their credibility be in ruins, but they may even face claims for damages from airline companies and passengers, who incurred losses amounting to billions of dollars as a result of the drama staged by the British police. (http://www.saag.org/papers20/paper1920.html)
Bahawalpur, which is the home-town of Maulana Masood Azhar, the Amir of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), has generally been known as the stronghold of the JEM, but the LET too has a training camp there, which is run by Azam Cheema, a Pakistani national. Azam Cheema alias Baba, who is No.3 in the LET of Pakistan and reportedly co-ordinates its operations in India, is Professor of Islamiat at a degree college of Faislabad in Pakistani Punjab. Abu Zubaidah, the No.3 in Al Qaeda, was arrested by the Pakistani authorities in March, 2002, in the house of an LET operative in Faislabad. The US' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had come to know of his having been given shelter by the LET in Faislabad. The ISI arrested him, at the prodding of the CIA, and he was flown out of Pakistan by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for interrogation. At that time, there were reports that Azam Cheema had brought Abu Zubaidah to Faislabad after he had escaped from Afghanistan and organised shelter for him there. Despite this, he was not arrested by the Pakistani authorities and Cheema continued to co-ordinate the operations of the LET in India. The presence of an LET training camp in Bahawalpur came to notice during the interrogation of two LET operatives ---Feroz Abdul Latif Ghaswala alias Abdullah and Mohammad Chippa alias Ubedullah---arrested by the Delhi police in May, 2006. Their interrogation also brought out that they were taken to Teheran via Dhaka with valid visas and immigration stamps on their passports and then clandestinely taken by road from Teheran into Balochistan and then to Bahawalpur for the training. They returned to India after the training by the same route. It would appear that the Indian members of the LET, who had participated in the Mumbai blasts of July 11, 2006, had also travelled to Bahawalpur via Teheran for training with valid Iranian visas and immigration stamps, but with no entries regarding their further travel from Teheran to Bahawalpur via Balochistan. It is interesting to recall that the three British citizens of Pakistani origin, who carried out the London blasts of July, 2005, were also reported to have visited Bahawalpur and that Rashid Rauf, a Mirpuri absconder wanted in a murder case of Birmingham, who was reported by the Pakistani authorities to have acted as a cut-out with an Afghanistan-based Al Qaeda leader in planning the operation to blow up some US-bound planes in August, was arrested in Bahawalpur, where he had been living for three years in a house bought by him. He had married a woman related to Maulana Masood Azhar (http://www.saag.org/papers20/paper1971.html)
http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cpapers21%5Cpaper2052.html
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Google "Rashid Rauf - Mastermind"
Thursday, 14 December 2006 20:17
by Craig Murray
On the first page ofresults you will find CBS, the BBC, the Times, Guardian and Mail all describing Rauf last summer, on security service or police briefing, as the "Mastermind" behind the "Liquid terror bomb plot". So the fact that a Pakistani court has found there is no evidence of terrorism against him cannot be lightly dismissed by the cheerleaders of the plot story.
Rashid Rauf still faces other charges, including forgery, and what is touted as possession of explosives, although what he actually possessed was hydrogen peroxide, which is not explosive. As hydrogen peroxide is readily obtainable without limitationfrom any chemist or hardware store in the UK, why you would source it in Pakistan to blow up jetsin Britainwas never very convincing.The Pakistani courtperhaps felt so too.
Rashid Rauf has much to answer. He is still wanted in the UK over the murder of his uncle some years ago - a crime which, like the alleged forgery,had no apparent terrorist link. None of which adds to the credibility of the evidence he allegedly gave the Pakistani intelligence services about the liquid bomb plot in the UK.
A second and simultaneous development is even more compelling evidence that this massive scare was, as I said at the time, "More propaganda than plot". Thames Valley police have given up after five months scouring the woods near High Wycombe where the bomb materials were allegedly hidden. They told the Home Office on 12 December that they would only continue if the government were prepared to meet the costs; they wished to get back to devoting their resources to real crimes, like armed robbery and burglary.
Remember this was a plot described by the authorities as "Mass murder on an unimaginable scale" and "Bigger than 9/11". There have been instances in the UK of hundreds of police officers deployed for years to find an individual murderer. If the police really believed they were dealing with an effort at "Mass murder on an unimaginable scale", would they be calling off the search after five months? No.
Which brings us to the lies that have been told - one of which concerns this search. An anonymous police source tipped off the media early on that they had discovered a "Suitcase" containing "bomb-making materials". This has recently been described to me by a security service source as "A lot of rubbish from someone's garage dumped in the woods". You could indeed cannibalise bits of old wire, clocks and car parts to form part of a bomb -perhaps you could enclose it in the old suitcase. But have they found stuff that is exclusively concerned with causing explosions, like detonators, explosives or those famous liquid chemicals? No, they haven't found any.
Wycombe Woods, like the sands of Iraq, have failed to yield up the advertised WMD.
The other "evidence" that the police announced they had found consisted of wills (with the implication they were made by suicide bombers) and a map of Afghanistan. It turns out that the wills were made in the early 90s by volunteers going off to fight the Serbs in Bosnia - they had been left with the now deceased uncle of one of those arrested. The map of Afghanistan had been copied out by an eleven year old boy. All of which is well known to the UK media, but none of which has been reported for fear of prejudicing the trial. I am at a complete loss to understand why it does not prejudice the trial for police to announce in a blaze of worldwide front page publicity that they have found bomb-making materials, wills and maps. Only if you contradict the police is that prejudicial. Can anyone explain why?
While the arrest of 26 people in connection with the plot was also massively publicised, the gradual release of many of them has again gone virtually unreported. For example on 31 October a judge released two brothers from Chingford commenting that the police had produced no credible evidence against them. Charges against others have been downgraded, so that those now accused of plotting to commit explosions, are less than the ten planes the police claimed they planned to blow up in suicide attacks.
Five British newspapers had to pay damages to a Birmingham man they accused, on security service briefing, of being part of the plot. Only the Guardian had the grace topublish the fact and print a retraction.
A final fact to ponder. Despite naming him as the "mastermind" behind somethng "bigger than 9/11", the British government made no attempt to extradite Rashid Rauf on charges of terrorism. That is not difficult to do - the Pakistani authorities have handed over scores of terrorist suspects to the US, many into the extraordinary rendition process, and on average the procedure is astonishingly quick - less than a week and they are out of the country. But the British security services, who placed so much weight on intelligence from Rashid Rauf, were extraordinarily coy about getting him here where his evidence could be properly scrutinised by a British court.However MI5were greatly embarrassed by Birmingham police, who insisted on pointing out that Rauf was wanted in the UK over the alleged murder of his uncle in Birmingham. Now he was in custody in Pakistan, shouldn't we extradite him? So eventually an extradition request over that murder was formally submitted - but not pursued with real energy or effort. There remains no sign that we will see Rauf in the UK.
I still do not rule out that there was a germ of a terror plot at the heart of this investigation. We can speculate about agents provocateurs and security service penetration, both British and Pakistani, but still there might have been genuine terrorists involved. But the incredible disruption to the travelling public, the War on Shampoo, and the "Bigger than 9/11" hype is unravelling.
You won't read that in the newspapers.
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/445-google-qrashid-rauf-mastermindq.html
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The mysterious disappearance of an alleged terror mastermind
Rashid Rauf's escape from police at a mosque seemed audacious. But his lawyer believes he is still in custody. Ian Cobain reports from Rawalpindi
Questions for Musharraf on missing terror plot suspect at No 10 talks
- Ian Cobain
- The Guardian, Monday 28 January 2008
![[Image: rasihd372.jpg]](http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/01/27/rasihd372.jpg)
Rashid Rauf, a Briton allegedly involved in a plot to blow up transatlantic jets, leaving court after an appearance in Rawalpindi. Photograph: Farooq Naeem/AFP/Getty ImagesOn the morning of Thursday August 10 2006, Britain awoke to the news that the security services and police were alleged to have foiled a terror attack that was to have been unprecedented in magnitude and mercilessness, according to senior Scotland Yard officers.Using smuggled liquid explosives and detonators made from camera flashlights, Islamist terrorists were said to have been plotting to bring down 10 airliners in mid-Atlantic. Three thousand people or more were to have died.
A few hours earlier, New Yorkers watching late-night television news had been told official sources had identified the alleged mastermind as a British citizen called Rashid Rauf. A few hours later, Pakistani authorities were reporting that he had already been captured.
Little was known about Rauf at that time, other than that he was from Birmingham, and that he had flown to Pakistan four years earlier, one step ahead of detectives who were eager to question him about the murder of his uncle. Eighteen months on, the alleged terrorist mastermind remains something of an enigma, even though he is at the centre of another curious episode in the campaign against international jihadist terror - one far more difficult to fathom than the alleged airline bomb plot.
Shortly before Christmas, Rauf is said to have escaped from Pakistani custody when two policemen escorting him from court in the capital, Islamabad, to a jail outside the nearby city of Rawalpindi stopped to allow him to pray in a roadside mosque. The officers claimed that when Rauf walked into the mosque they waited outside in their car, never considering for a moment that he could simply walk out of the back door.
Both policemen are now themselves in custody, and the official Pakistani government explanation is that they were bribed. It is an explanation that appears to satisfy western officials in Islamabad. "The policemen must have been paid off, they didn't report it for several hours," says one. "The Pakistani government is seriously embarrassed by this." Others are not so sure, however, and suspect that Rauf may still be in custody, this time at one of the secret detention centres that the formidable Pakistani security agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), is known to operate at anonymous suburban villas. "It wasn't an escape from custody," says his lawyer, Hashmat Ali Habib. "You could call it a 'mysterious disappearance' if you like, but not an escape. The Pakistanis are simply not interested in handing him over to the British. They never have been, although it is not clear why not."
What is clear is that in a country where ties of family and faith can mean more than duty or the letter of the law, where intelligence agencies stand accused of operating like terrorists and where terrorist gangs are the creation of those same agencies, nothing can be taken for granted in the strange disappearance of Rashid Rauf.
Vanishing act
The son of a successful businessman from the Ward End area of Birmingham, east of the city centre, Rauf, 27, had already pulled off one vanishing act, in April 2002, after his uncle, Mohammed Saeed, was stabbed repeatedly in the stomach as he walked home from work. Saeed, 54, managed to stagger the few yards to his front door, where he collapsed in front of his wife and children. The motive for his killing has never been made public, but if West Midlands police ever get their hands on Rauf, they say he will face a charge of murder.
Once in Pakistan, the young Brummie headed for Bahawalpur, a small town 450 miles south of Islamabad where he knew a local imam, a man who had stayed at his family home while preaching in the UK. Despite speaking very little Urdu, Rauf was soon engaged to marry the imam's daughter. It was a union that brought him close to an organisation once described as the deadliest terrorist group on the sub-continent.
Rauf's wife is closely related by marriage to Maulana Masood Azhar, the founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed, or Army of Mohammed, a group that enjoyed close links with the ISI during the 1990s, when it was helping the Pakistani government wage a proxy war against India over the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Outlawed in the wake of the September 11 attacks, at the insistence of the United States, Jaish-e-Mohammed has been alleged to have been implicated in the murder of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl, and is accused of orchestrating a string of suicide bombing attacks in Pakistan. Despite this, it operates almost openly across Pakistan under a number of different names, and undoubtedly still has contacts within the ISI and the Pakistani police.
Rauf was picked up in Bahawalpur in early August 2006, almost a week before any airliner terrorism suspects were detained in the UK. The Americans had been urging the British and Pakistani authorities to move quickly, and when they threatened to detain Rauf themselves, and hurl him into their so-called extraordinary rendition programme, the ISI arrested him.
After being held incommunicado by the ISI, Rauf was brought before court accused of terrorism offences, and remanded to Adiala prison, where violence and extortion is rife and where a parliamentary human rights commission concluded after a visit in May 2006 that "most prisoners showed signs of physical abuse". Rauf subsequently told his lawyer that he had been mistreated, and that he had been interrogated by westerners as well as Pakistani officials.
In December 2006, a judge threw out the terrorism charges, but Rauf remained in custody for a further year, accused of possessing explosives and carrying forged identity papers. Then, last November, a lower court ordered his release after those charges were withdrawn. Within 30 minutes, the government announced that he was to be extradited to the UK, and the following day he was detained for a further 90 days. To complicate matters, the Pakistani government had been insisting for several months that Rauf would be handed over only if the British extradited two Pakistani men living in London. The pair - separatists from the south-western province of Balochistan - are accused by Islamabad of terrorism, which they firmly deny. While the British government insisted there could be no such swap, the two men were arrested by Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command within three weeks of extradition proceedings beginning against Rauf, and are fighting to remain in the UK.
Extradition process
Under the terms of the extradition process, Rauf was to be brought regularly before a court in Islamabad, 18 miles from Adiala prison. On December 14, Habib says, he heard shortly after lunch that his client had unlocked his handcuffs and escaped while being taken to court.
That evening, however, Islamabad police said that two policemen escorting him from court had taken him to a McDonald's drive-in in Rawalpindi later that afternoon before allowing him to pray alone at a mosque, still handcuffed. And then, according to the official account, the alleged British terrorist mastermind simply melted away.
McDonald's, in the neighbourhood known as Civil Lines, is a place where teenagers hum to music echoing from the speakers while security guards carefully search their cars for bombs. The manager is clearly tired of answering questions about Rashid Rauf. "I can tell you what I have told the police," he says. "Nobody noticed them. But we have lots of policemen coming here, and lots of people who look like Rauf."
A few miles away on Adiala Road, leading from the city to the prison, there was a similar story at Rukhshanda mosque. "We don't remember seeing Rauf that day, and the police didn't come in looking for him," says the caretaker. "We only know he's supposed to have escaped from here because the police have been back every day since, asking questions."
At the back of the mosque is a small yard bounded by a head-high wall. Behind the wall is an alley, at the end of which lie open fields. And somewhere beyond those, according to the official account, perhaps hiding with members of Jaish-e-Mohammed, is the young man from Birmingham who plotted to bring down 10 transatlantic airliners.
It is an account that makes Rauf's lawyer smile. "Look, many people, thousands of people, disappear in Pakistan," says Habib. "The government knows what it means, and the people know what it means."
Like most Pakistanis, Habib is afraid of the ISI, and is reluctant to name the agency. "You can infer what you like," is all he will say.
Human rights organisations are not so apprehensive. Amnesty International said in a recent report that in the Pakistani government's enthusiasm for the so-called war on terror, "many people have been detained incommunicado in undisclosed places of detention and tortured or ill-treated ... some have been charged with criminal offences unrelated to terrorism, others have been released without charge, reportedly after being warned to keep quiet about their experience, while some have been found dead".
Habib does not believe that Rauf has disappeared for ever. "Sometimes in Pakistan, people come home after two or three years saying they were just taken out of prison and left at the side of a main road," he says. "Or sometimes people are brought to the surface by the authorities, for some reason or other."
There is a third possibility: "Perhaps it will be announced that Rashid was caught in crossfire during a police operation. Then his family will be given his body."
Birmingham to Bahawalpur
· Rashid Rauf fled the UK in 2002 after his uncle, Mohammed Saeed, was stabbed repeatedly in the stomach as he walked home from work. West Midlands police say Rauf will face a charge of murder if he returns.
· Rauf ended up in Bahawalpur, a small town 450 miles south of Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. An imam there had once stayed at Rauf's family home in Birmingham. Rauf was soon engaged to the imam's daughter. Rauf's wife is closely related by marriage to Maulana Masood Azhar, founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed, or Army of Muhammad, a group outlawed in the wake of the September 11 attacks at the insistence of the United States. Jaish-e-Mohammed has been alleged to have been implicated in the murder of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal correspondent, and is accused of orchestrating a string of suicide bombing attacks in Pakistan.
· Rauf was picked up in Bahawalpur in early August 2006 as part of the investigation into an alleged plot to bring down 10 airliners flying from Britain to the United States. In court he was accused of terrorism offences and remanded to Adiala prison, near Rawalpindi.
· In December 2006 a judge threw out the terrorism charges, but he remained in custody for a further year, accused of possessing explosives and carrying forged identity papers. Last November a lower court ordered his release but the government immediately announced that he was to be extradited to the UK and he was detained for a further 90 days. Rauf is said to have escaped on December 14 while being returned to prison after an extradition hearing in Islamabad.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jan/28/pakistan.world1
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Sources: August terror plot is a 'fiction' underscoring police failures
Nafeez Ahmed
[size=12]Published: Monday September 18, 2006[/SIZE]
Print This Email ThisBritish Army expert casts doubt on 'liquid explosives' threat, Al Qaeda network in UK Identified
Lieutenant-Colonel (ret.) Nigel Wylde, a former senior British Army Intelligence Officer, has suggested that the police and government story about the "terror plot" revealed on 10th August was part of a "pattern of lies and deceit."
British and American government officials have described the operation which resulting in the arrest of 24 mostly British Muslim suspects, as a resounding success. Thirteen of the suspects have been charged, and two released without charges.
According to security sources, the terror suspects were planning to board up to ten civilian airliners and detonate highly volatile liquid explosives on the planes in a spectacular terrorist operation. The liquid explosives -- either TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide), DADP (diacetone diperoxide) or the less sensitive HMTD (hexamethylene triperoxide diamine) -- were reportedly to be made on board the planes by mixing sports drinks with a peroxide-based household gel and then be detonated using an MP3 player or mobile phone.
But Lt. Col. Wylde, who was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal for his command of the Belfast Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit in 1974, described this scenario as a "fiction." Creating liquid explosives is a "highly dangerous and sophisticated task," he states, one that requires not only significant chemical expertise but also appropriate equipment.
Terror plot scenario "untenable"
"The idea that these people could sit in the plane toilet and simply mix together these normal household fluids to create a high explosive capable of blowing up the entire aircraft is untenable," said Lt. Col. Wylde, who was trained as an ammunition technical officer responsible for terrorist bomb disposal at the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in Sandhurst.
After working as a bomb defuser in Northern Ireland, Lt. Col. Wylde became a senior officer in British Army Intelligence in 1977. During the Cold War, he collected intelligence as part of an undercover East German "liaison unit," then went on to work in the Ministry of Defense to review its communications systems.
"So who came up with the idea that a bomb could be made on board? Not Al Qaeda for sure. It would not work. Bin Laden is interested in success not deterrence by failure," Wylde stated.
"This story has been blown out of all proportion. The liquids would need to be carefully distilled at freezing temperatures to extract the required chemicals, which are very difficult to obtain in the purities needed."
Once the fluids have been extracted, the process of mixing them produces significant amounts of heat and vile fumes. "The resulting liquid then needs some hours at room temperature for the white crystals that are the explosive to develop." The whole process, which can take between 12 and 36 hours, is "very dangerous, even in a lab, and can lead to premature detonation," said Lt. Col. Wylde.
If there was a conspiracy, he added, "it did not involve manufacturing the explosives in the loo," as this simply "could not have worked." The process would be quickly and easily detected. The fumes of the chemicals in the toilet "would be smelt by anybody in the area." They would also inevitably "cause the alarms in the toilet and in the air change system in the aircraft to be triggered. The pilot has the ability to dump all the air from an aircraft as a fire-fighting measure, leaving people to use oxygen masks. All this means the planned attack would be detected long before the queues outside the loo had grown to enormous lengths."
Government silent on detonators
Even if it was possible for the explosive to have been made on the aircraft, a detonator, probably made from TATP, would be needed to set it off. "It is very dangerous and risky to the individual," Wylde said. "As the quantity involved would be small this would injure the would-be suicide bomber but not endanger the aircraft, thus defeating the object of bringing down an aircraft."
Despite the implausibility of this scenario, it has been used to justify wide-ranging new security measures that threaten to permanently curtail civil liberties and to suspend sections of the United Kingdom's Human Rights Act of 1998. "Why were the public delicately informed of an alleged conspiracy which the authorities knew, or should have known, could not have worked?" asked Lt. Col. Wylde.
"This is not a new problem," he added, noting that 'shoe-bomber' Richard Reid had attempted to use this type of explosive on a plane in December 2001. "If this threat is real, what has been done to develop explosive test kits capable of detecting peroxide based explosives?" asked Wylde. "These are the real issues about protecting the public that have not been publicised. Instead we are going to get demands for more internment without trial."
Lt. Col. Wylde also raised questions about the criminal investigation into the 7th July terrorist attacks in London last year. He noted that police and government sources have maintained "total silence" about the detonation devices used in the bombs on the London Underground and the bus at Tavistock Square. "Whatever the nature of the primary explosive materials, even if it was home-made TATP, the detonator that must be used to trigger an explosion is an extremely dangerous device to make, requiring a high level of expertise that cannot be simply self-taught or picked-up over the internet," Wylde stated.
The government's silence on the detonation device used in the attacks is "disturbing," he said, as the creation of the devices requires the involvement of trained explosives experts. Wylde speculated that such individuals would have to be present either inside the country or outside, perhaps in Eastern Europe, where they would be active participants in an international supply-chain to UK operatives. "In either case, we are talking about something far more dangerous than home-grown radicals here."
Spy slams police inaction against terrorists
Wylde's concerns are echoed by others familiar with British terrorism-related intelligence operations, such as Glen Jenvey, who is profiled in the bestselling book, The Terror Tracker, by terrorism investigator Neil Doyle. Jenvey worked for several military attaches monitoring terrorist groups in London and obtained crucial video and surveillance evidence used by British police to arrest radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, who was convicted last February.
"I've been closely monitoring the internet communications of extremist Muslim groups inside the UK both before and after 7/7, and they are intimately interconnected," said Jenvey, who is affiliated with the London-based terror watch group VIGIL. "We've identified a coordinated leadership of at least 20 and up to 60 people, extremist preachers with blatant international al-Qaeda terrorist connections."
Jenvey noted that even though they are known to the authorities and are monitored while breaking the law with impunity, particularly in their private sermons, the police have failed to take appropriate action against them. "The police don't need to round up and detain thousands of British Muslims. If they only arrested, charged and prosecuted these 20 key terrorist leaders, they will have a struck a fatal blow against the epicentres of al-Qaeda extremism in the UK. But they're sitting on this."
Jenvey points to Omar Bakri Mohammed, a colleague of convicted terrorist Abu Hamza who headed the now-banned Islamist group al-Muhajiroun in the United Kingdom. Despite being exiled to Lebanon, Omar Bakri continues to communicate with UK-based extremist groups which are believed to be successors of al-Muhajiroun operating under new names, including the Saved Sect and al-Ghurabaa. British security sources have confirmed that the 7/7 bombers were associates of Omar Bakri's network, and Bakri himself publicly boasted a year before the London bombings that an al-Qaeda cell in London was planning a terrorist strike.
An investigation by the counterterrorism unit in the New York Police Department found that Bakri's al-Muhajiroun had formed 81 front groups and support networks in six countries, most of them based in London, the home counties bordering London, the Midlands, Lancashire and West Yorkshire. By the time Home Secretary Dr. John Reid moved in July to proscribe the latest incarnation of al-Muhajiroun, al-Ghurabaa, this sprawling interconnected network was fully functioning and continues to operate namelessly, despite proscription. Bakri's network has recently adopted the name "Al Sabiqoon Al-Awwaloon".
Jenvey complains that, despite the arrest in early September of radical cleric Abu Abdullah, convicted terrorist Abu Hamza's successor at the Finsbury Park Mosque, a "hardcore group of 20 or more extremists operating around Omar Bakri" remains at large. "The police have every reason to act, and they know who these people are. Their failure to do so has only exacerbated unjustified demonization of Muslims. These extremists are not Muslims in any meaningful sense, they are simply terrorists obsessed with violence."
MI5, MI6 recruiting extremists?
Even the arrest of Abu Abdullah only occurred after his support for terrorism was widely reported in the British and American media in late August. On 23rd August, he justified the killing of Westerners and told CNN correspondent Dan Rivers that Tony Blair is a "legitimate target" of jihad. The Sunday Times remarked that he "is apparently being allowed to operate unchecked by the authorities five months after a law was passed making it a criminal offence to glorify terrorism."
Torture may have been used to extract evidence for the weekend police raids which resulted in the arrest of 14 British Muslims, including Abdullah. Sources confirm that information came from detainees at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo, where interrogation techniques classified as torture under international law are routinely used.
The reluctance to take decisive action against the leadership of the extremist network in the UK has a long history. According to John Loftus, a former Justice Department prosecutor, Omar Bakri and Abu Hamza, as well as the suspected mastermind of the London bombings Haroon Aswat, were all recruited by MI6 in the mid-1990s to draft up British Muslims to fight in Kosovo. American and French security sources corroborate the revelation. The MI6 connection raises questions about Bakri's relationship with British authorities today. Exiled to Lebanon and outside British jurisdiction, he is effectively immune to prosecution.
Other London-based radical clerics with terrorist connections also had a relationship to the security services. Abu Qatada, described as al-Qaeda's European ambassador, was, according to French sources a long-time MI5 informant. Pakistani government insiders similarly believe that Ahmed Omar Sheikh Saeed, the British al-Qaeda finance chief from Forest Gate, not only worked with the ISI, Pakistani's military intelligence service, but was also recruited by the CIA as an informant. Saeed, who reportedly wired several hundred thousand dollars to alleged chief 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, is currently in Pakistani custody for the murder of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl.
Omar Bakri regularly uses the internet to communicate from Lebanon with his followers in Britain. On Sunday evening, 3rd September, Omar Bakri told participants in an online chat forum that he had been pulled in by the Lebanese authorities at the request of the US and British governments and questioned in relation to the "terror plot". Although he denied involvement in the plot, he claimed that some of the 24 British Muslim suspects were known to him. When asked to confirm or deny whether Bakri had indeed been arrested at the request of the British, the Foreign Office had no comment. Bakri said that he was regularly questioned by Lebanese officials on behalf of the British government.
The official reluctance to act against Bakri and his active associates in the UK does not match the government's willingness to act pre-emptively to foil a plot of doubtful reality. Official reluctance to acknowledge the significance of the detonators used in the 7/7 terrorist operation suggests that the threat is far more sophisticated than authorities have admitted, and that emphasis on home-grown amateurs is mistaken. Lt. Col. Wylde's observations would seem to indicate that the terror-threat narrative is being manipulated for reasons of political expediency.
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Acknowledgements: Thanks to Graham Ennis, Nigel Wylde and Glen Jenvey for their research assistance and contribution to this story. They bear no responsibility for any errors therein. An abridged version of this story will be printed in The Muslim News, UK on 29th September 2006.
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is the author of The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (Duckworth, £9:99) and The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism (Arris, £12:99). He testified in the US Congress about his research on international terrorism in July 2005. He teaches International Relations at the University of Sussex, Brighton.
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Sources_August_Terror_Plot_Fiction_Underscoring_0918.html
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Rashid Rauf (born ca. 1981 - allegedly died November 22, 2008) was an alleged Al-Qaeda operative.[1] He was a dual citizen of Britain and Pakistan who was arrested in Bhawalpur, Pakistan in connection with the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot in August 2006, a day before some arrests were made in Britain. The Pakistani Interior Minister, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, claimed that "he is an al Qaeda operative with linkages in Afghanistan".[2] He is said to be one of the ringleaders of the alleged plot. In December 2006, the anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi found no evidence that he had been involved in terrorist activities, and his charges were downgraded to forgery and possession of explosives.
Rauf was born in England to Pakistani parents, and brought up in Birmingham where his father was a baker. Rauf was married to a relative of Maulana Masood Azhar, who is the head and founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed, an Islamist militant group in Pakistan.[3] One of Rauf's brothers, Tayib Rauf, was among those arrested in Britain, although he was later released without charges.
Rauf was reportedly killed by a U.S. drone attack in Pakistan on November 22, 2008, carried out by the CIA's highly secretive Special Activities Division.[4] His family have denied that he was killed.[5] As of August 11, 2009, Asia Times Online believes that he is alive and living in North Waziristan.[6] Some of Rauf's associates also believe that he never escaped from prison in 2007 and that he might have been dead long before the airstrike.[7]
[edit] Timeline
See also: Timeline of the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot
August 12, 2006: U.S. and British sources said Rashid Rauf had a key operational role in the alleged plot. Rauf, a British citizen, appeared before magistrate, according to Pakistan's Interior Ministry. Rauf is believed to have left the UK after his uncle was killed in 2002. He was not charged over the murder, which has never been solved.[8]
August 15: Pakistan said it may extradite Rauf to Britain, although no request had been received, according to The Associated Press.[9]
August 17: The alleged UK airport terror plot was sanctioned by al Qaeda's No2, Ayman al Zawahri, according to Pakistani intelligence. The latest investigations by Pakistan indicate that Rashid Rauf, was the planner of the alleged attacks. "We have reason to believe that it was al Qaeda sanctioned and was probably cleared by al Zawahri", said a Pakistani official. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation.[10]
August 19: After two weeks of interrogation and a careful search of his house, too little evidence had been found to justify his extradition.[11]
August 22: In Pakistan, law enforcement authorities continued to interrogate Rashid Rauf over his alleged key role in the plot, officials told The Associated Press. Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said British police were conducting inquiries in Pakistan but were not involved in questioning Rauf.[12]
August 26: Pakistani Interior minister Aftab Ahmad Sherpao said Rashid Rauf had “wider international links” and was in touch with an Afghanistan-based al-Qaida leader. He did not offer any evidence to back up his claim. Pakistan has withheld information about at least seven suspects, whom security officials say were arrested on Rauf’s information. Pakistan has no extradition treaty with Britain, but Mr Sherpao said they would consider deporting Rauf to London if any such request was made to them. Rauf, in his mid-20s, is believed to be being interrogated by Pakistan agents near the capital, Islamabad.[13]
December 13: The terrorism charges against Rauf Rashid are dropped. The Pakistani court find there is no evidence that he is involved in terrorism. The British government has stated this makes no difference to their proceedings against the other suspects whom they hold.[14]
December 14, 2007: Rashid Rauf mysteriously escaped from jail. Authorities say that he escaped after freeing himself from handcuffs. The two police officials on the duty were arrested by Islamabad police. The police also tightened security at public transport routes and especially in Rauf's native town, Mirpur.
November 22 2008: Rashid Rauf is reportedly killed in a U.S. missile strike in Pakistan. His family deny the reports.
April 8 2009: British security sources claim Rauf was the mastermind behind an alleged terror cell, the members of which were arrested in North West England. It is unclear whether they thought he was still alive at this time.[15]
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/22/rashid-rauf-profile
- ^ today.reuters.com. "Pakistan says al Qaeda member held over foiled plot". Reuters. http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-08-11T174351Z_01_L11516706_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-BRITAIN-PAKISTAN-QAEDA.xml&src=rss&rpc=22. Retrieved August 11 2006.
- ^ "JeM chief's father questioned about Rauf", NDTV, August 18, 2006. Retrieved on August 18, 2006
- ^ Airstrike Kills Qaeda-Linked Militant in Pakistan, The New York Times, 2008-11-23
- ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/25/rashid-rauf-british-terror-suspect
- ^ Shahzad, Syed Saleem. "Guessing games over Taliban leader". Asia Times Online. August 11, 2009.
- ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/sep/08/rashid-rauf-terrorism-torture-pakistan
- ^ Terror plot: Internet cafes raided CNN
- ^ UK police search for explosives CNN
- ^ Al-Qaeda Sanctioned Plot Sky News
- ^ Glen Owen (19 August 2006). "Pakistanis find no evidence against ‘terror mastermind’". The Daily Mail. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=401426. Retrieved 2006-12-18.
- ^ Air plot suspects appear in court CNN
- ^ Airline terror pilot suspect gives 'vital clues' Evening Echo
- ^ "UK 'plot' terror charge dropped". BBC News. 13 December 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6175427.stm. Retrieved 2006-12-18.
- ^ "Terror blunder: Met anti-terror chief's mistake". Daily Telegraph. 9 April 2009. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/5127953/Terror-blunder-Met-anti-terror-chiefs-mistake.html. Retrieved 2009-04-09.
Rashid Rauf - Jan Klimkowski - 09-09-2009
Magda - thank you.
On the available evidence, the lack of alacrity shown by anti-terrorism authorities, and the balance of probabilities, this case appears to be a crock.
