NYT : Man at Heart of British Terrorist Plot Laid Roots in a Land Rife With Sunni Extremism

Man at Heart of British Terrorist Plot Laid Roots in a Land Rife With Sunni Extremism

By CARLOTTA GALL and ARIF JAMAL | August 21, 2006

BAHAWALPUR, Pakistan, Aug. 19 — Life is slow in this small scruffy town in southern Punjab, surrounded by cotton and corn fields, lush from the monsoon rains. People lounge on rope beds under the trees, and camels and water buffalo wander along the roadside. But this corner of Pakistan has an undercurrent of sectarian violence and suspicions of links to Al Qaeda that belie the quiet rural image.

It is here that Rashid Rauf, a crucial figure in what British investigators say was a plot to bomb airliners flying from London to the United States, chose four years ago to settle and marry, far from his home in Britain, and from his ancestral village in Pakistani-administered Kashmir in northern Pakistan. And it was here, government officials in Islamabad have said, that Mr. Rauf was arrested some time before Aug. 10, when news of the investigation broke.

What first brought Mr. Rauf to southern Punjab remains as unclear as what role he might have had in any terrorist plot. But one thing is clear: the family he married into is deeply enmeshed in the world of Sunni extremism and sectarian violence, with longstanding connections to Afghanistan and even a link to the killer of the journalist Daniel Pearl.

Mr. Rauf married one of three sisters, said a teacher at a madrasa, Dar-ul-Uloom Madnia, founded by Mr. Rauf’s late father-in-law. Another sister, the teacher said, is married to a cleric called Maulana Obaidullah who was arrested by the police two and a half years ago, though no reason is known.

Most significantly, the teacher, Mohammed Sadiq, said the third sister was married to Tahir Masood. He is a younger brother of Maulana Masood Azhar, the founder of Jaish-e-Muhammad, or Army of Muhammad, one of the most extreme Islamist groups in Pakistan, which is banned but remains active under different names.

From Mr. Azhar come many of the most disturbing connections. He was captured in Indian Kashmir and was one of three convicted prisoners held in India who were exchanged in a deal between the Indian government and the hijackers of an Indian Airlines plane in Dec. 24, 1999. The hijackers forced the plane to land in Kandahar, Afghanistan, which was then in the control of the Taliban, and negotiations through the Taliban led to India releasing three people from jail in exchange for the 150 hostages on board the plane.

Another of the prisoners was Ahmed Omar Sheikh, a British citizen of Pakistani descent who was later convicted for his part in the killing of Mr. Pearl, a Wall Street Journal correspondent.

After Mr. Azhar was freed in 2000, he founded Jaish-e-Muhammad, ostensibly as an organization supporting mujahedeen fighting in Afghanistan and Kashmir, but by 2002 it had already been cited as a terrorist organization by the United States and banned by the Pakistani authorities. Mr. Azhar lives and works in Karachi, editing a jihadi newspaper, Al Qalam, or The Pen, according to his father, Allah Baksh Sabir.

Mr. Sabir now runs the Usman-o-Ali madrasa in Bahawalpur, which was founded by Mr. Azhar. Last week, he told reporters that Mr. Rauf had been a member of Jaish-e-Muhammad. The next day, ringed by police officers and plainclothes intelligence officials, he denied making such comments and denied even knowing of the existence of Mr. Rauf, even though his son is Mr. Rauf’s brother-in-law.

The brother-in-law, Maulana Suhaib, in his late 20’s, is a teacher at Dar-ul-Uloom Madnia, but he had gone into hiding, said Mr. Sadiq, the teacher, who added, “He was very worried because a lot of people have started coming round.”

“He said he had nothing to do with anything,” Mr. Sadiq said. “Maulana Suhaib did not know who Rashid Rauf was and never expressed any apprehensions before.” Of Mr. Rauf, he said: “I used to hear that he was doing big business, selling house furniture and goods such as fridges. I always heard he was a rich man.”

In this southern tip of Punjab, where there are almost equal populations of Sunni and Shiites, Sunni extremism has existed for many years. The Sunni extremist groups have grown out of the Deobandi branch of Islamic scholarship, which is anti-Shiite in its teaching and emphasizes the importance of jihad, or armed struggle. The Taliban in Afghanistan were overwhelmingly Deobandis, as are the most active jihadi militant organizations in Pakistan.

Connections between Pakistani and Afghan extremists grew as Pakistani intelligence services harnessed the Deobandi groups to fight the Soviet Army in Afghanistan in the 1980’s. As with Jaish-e-Muhammad, the intelligence services also recruited the groups to fight Indian rule in Kashmir.

Another Sunni extremist group with links to the region is Lashkar-e-Jangvi, which is increasingly seen as an armed instrument of Al Qaeda in Pakistan. It is believed to recruit from other terrorist groups, and to have a number of members who were in Jaish-e-Muhammad.

One of Pakistan’s most wanted men is linked to that group. He is Matiur Rehman, who is a main suspect in an assassination attempt on President Pervez Musharraf in 2003. He is from the Bahawalpur district and, according to his father, was a student at the Dar-ul-Uloom Madnia madrasa. Interviewed in his home in the village of Had Rajgan, 47 miles from Bahawalpur, the father, Ali Muhammad Sirhindi, said Mr. Rehman had studied there for five years and then at age 19 went to fight in Afghanistan.

Any connection Mr. Rauf might have to global jihad is now the subject of an international investigation. He does not seem to have been on the police’s radar here before the British authorities asked the Pakistanis to put him under surveillance. He was living openly in a middle-class two-story house in the town on a narrow unpaved street, in a neighborhood called Model Town.

The house was quiet on a recent visit, and a metal grill across the entrance was padlocked. Several homeless families were living in tents on an empty plot of land across from the house. Neighbors came out to stare as journalists arrived with a police escort to visit the house, but they said they had seen little of the people living there.

“He was arrested a couple of weeks ago, and police conducted a raid about two weeks ago,” said one neighbor living along the street, asking not to be identifed for fear of trouble from the police.

The family moved in about a year ago, but an elderly man inside the house shunned a welcoming visit, another neighbor said. “I never went back,” the neighbor said. “A lot of veiled women and bearded men would come to visit around midnight.”

Fateh Muhammad, 38, who lives one house down, said of Mr. Rauf: “He was very religious. He used to go to the mosque. He had a long beard, but nearly a month ago, he cut it.”

The police carried away a few things after the raid, including computers, but no one was arrested. The rest of the family left, Mr. Muhammad said.

In a small town where everyone knows everyone, the neighbors’ reticence to speak in detail told its own tale. Police cars and plainclothes intelligence officers followed foreign reporters everywhere they went in the town, taking notes during some of the interviews and sometimes warning interviewees not to answer a certain question. One resident on Mr. Rauf’s street whispered that security officials had warned neighbors not to talk to anyone about the family.

Police officials in the town said they were too busy to be interviewed, except the deputy superintendent of police, who said Mr. Rauf had not been known to the police before his arrest. He could not even confirm his arrest had occurred in the area, which suggested that intelligence agencies, rather than the police forces, had picked him up.