NYT : Pakistan Court Drops Charge in London Plot Case

Pakistan Court Drops Charge in London Plot Case

By SALMAN MASOOD | December 13, 2006

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 13 — A judge threw out terrorism charges on Wednesday against Rashid Rauf, a Briton of Pakistani descent whom prosecutors depicted as a major figure in a plot to smuggle liquid explosives onto trans-Atlantic airliners and detonate the bombs in flight.

The ruling means there are now no terrorism charges against two people once accused of being linchpins of a major Al Qaeda bombing plot. The other is Tayib Rauf, Mr. Rauf’s younger brother, who was detained in Britain last August and soon set free without charge.

But it was not clear whether the ruling would clear the way for Rashid Rauf’s return to Britain for questioning on other charges.

Reports of a bombing conspiracy set off a huge alarm in August in Britain and the United States, disrupting air travel when the authorities imposed some of the strictest peacetime security restrictions on passengers.

But less publicly, the alarm created powerful strains between American and British investigators over the timing of a crackdown on suspects in which British authorities rounded up 25 people on Aug. 9 and 10, later charging 17 of them. The other eight, including Tayib Rauf, were set free without charges.

British officials involved in the case said that American investigators had pushed for quicker arrests in the case but that the British had wanted to wait longer to gather admissible evidence.

One of seven people arrested in Pakistan in the case was Rashid Rauf, 25, who holds Pakistani and British citizenship. Pakistani officials identified him as a “key figure” and said he had contacts to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

But in Rawalpindi on Wednesday, Mr. Rauf appeared in a counterterrorism court and the judge dismissed most of the charges against him, upholding a defense objection that they lay outside the court’s jurisdiction.

Mr. Rauf still faces some secondary charges in Pakistan and is being held by the authorities. Britain has requested his extradition, and Pakistani officials said they are considering the request.

“Rauf was booked under six charges such as impersonation, cheating, forging documents, presenting those forged documents as real and keeping explosives,” Hashmat Habib, his lawyer, said in a telephone interview.

“When we scrutinized the charges, we were of the opinion that none of the charges fell under the jurisdiction of the antiterrorism court. The court agreed with our objection and the terrorism charges have been dropped. So, the outcome of today’s hearing is that there are no charges of terrorism against Rashid Rauf any more.”

Mr. Rauf is now scheduled to appear Dec. 20 before a District and Sessions Court to answer the remaining charges, Mr. Habib said.

Mr. Rauf has not been charged in Britain in connection with any airline plot, and a Home Office spokeswoman said no extradition request had been made in relation to the airline plot.

Britain has, however, filed an extradition request for Mr. Rauf as a suspect in the murder of an uncle, Mohamed Saeed, who was stabbed near his home in Birmingham in April 2002. “Our understanding is that the Pakistani authorities are proceeding with this request,” the spokeswoman said.

Britain and Pakistan have no extradition treaty, so it is Pakistan’s choice whether to permit extradition. It was not clear whether Mr. Rauf would be questioned about any plot in Britain if he were to be extradited.

The British government offered no immediate comment on the case.

Accounts differ over when Rashid Rauf was arrested. The Pakistani police said he was taken into custody on Aug. 10, the day of the British raids, in Chohan Chowk, near the Islamabad airport. But Mr. Habib said his client was arrested the day before while traveling between Multan and Bahawalpur, in Punjab Province.

Mr. Rauf left Britain in 2002 to settle and marry in Bahawalpur. He was not a subject of scrutiny before his arrest in August, although police had linked his wife’s family to an outlawed Islamist group.

Mr. Habib said the accusations against him were trumped up. “All the story about the plans of hijacking airplanes was an imaginary allegation, just to boost the graph of Bush and Blair,” he said.

The Rauf brothers’ father, Abdul, emigrated and settled as a baker in Birmingham but kept strong ties to his home country, starting a charity that raised money meant to help Pakistanis in need. His sons, too, seemed caught between the cultures, with Rashid moving to Pakistan while Tayib remained in Britain.

Stephen Grey and Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.