Rashid Rauf: missing 'mastermind' of the airline bomb plot

Pakistani officials say Rauf escaped and was later killed, but reports of appalling torture leave relatives sceptical about his fate



The conviction of three men who attempted to destroy at least seven transatlantic airliners, murdering more than 1,500 people, throws up new questions about the fate of the man said to have been one of the masterminds behind the plot — Rashid Rauf.

Despite Rauf's being a key figure in al-Qaida's most ambitious conspiracy against the west since 9/11, Pakistani officials maintain that he escaped in December 2007 after police took him from court to a mosque in Rawalpindi, where they say he was allowed to pray alone before escaping from a back door.

British diplomats in the country say they accept the official account of his escape, but Rauf's relatives in the Ward End area of Birmingham, and his lawyer in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, dismiss it as utterly implausible. Why, they ask, would a man who was of such great interest to the United States and the UK be guarded in a manner that was certain to end in his escape? Was he abducted and taken back into the custody of one of Pakistan's notorious agencies? And what role, they ask, did the British and Americans play in whatever happened to him?

Shortly after the "escape", Rauf's lawyer predicted that his death would be announced in due course. Eleven months later, Islamabad announced that Rauf and two other militants had been killed in a missile strike from an unmanned US drone flying over north Waziristan, near the Afghan border.

The mountainous region is so remote and lawless that it was impossible for independent observers to verify the claim. In Birmingham, however, his family are known to be deeply sceptical, and some of Rauf's associates believe he may already have been dead for some time.

Rauf had fled to Pakistan in 2002, one step ahead of West Midlands police, who want him in connection with the murder of an uncle. He was detained in August 2006, shortly before the airline plotters were rounded up at addresses across the south-east of England.

Before his "escape" the following year, Rauf told his lawyer he had suffered appalling torture, being beaten and subjected to electric shocks, and that he had been held for months in a cell that was so small that when he lay on his back his knees could touch the ceiling. He has also said British officials questioned him after Pakistani agents tortured him.