NYT : Pakistan Confirms Many Details About Key Figure Under Arrest

Pakistan Confirms Many Details About Key Figure Under Arrest

By CARLOTTA GALL | August 17, 2006

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Aug. 16 — New details unfolded Wednesday about the main figure arrested in the London bombing plot, Rashid Rauf. They included a confirmation by Pakistani officials that Mr. Rauf had married and settled in Bahawalpur, a southern town that is home to a notorious jihadist group, Jaish-e-Mohammed.

The background included accounts that he used to be at least an active member of the organization, which has been banned.

Pakistani officials confirmed that Mr. Rauf, a British citizen born in Pakistan, returned from Britain to settle in Bahawalpur in 2002 and that he married and had children there. Bahawalpur is a small town in southern Punjab, far from Mirpur, in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, the town Mr. Rauf’s family comes from.

Members of Jaish-e-Mohammed, insisting on anonymity, said Mr. Rauf had stayed a member of the group throughout its reincarnations.

A Reuters report from Bahawalpur, however, quoted the father of the founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed as saying Mr. Rauf had belonged to the group but later left it. The father, Hafiz Allah Bukhsh, said Mr. Rauf was related by marriage to one of his younger sons. The two men were married to two sisters, Mr. Bukhsh said. A former Pakistani official with close ties to intelligence agencies confirmed the details and said Mr. Rauf had “longstanding links with Jaish-e-Mohammed and also had Al Qaeda connections.”

Mr. Rauf has emerged as the main coordinating figure of the London case. His arrest led to the arrests of 24 people in Britain last Thursday.

“He became a central figure in all this,” said a senior government official who insisted on anonymity because of the investigation. “He was a connecting figure and central to it.”

Mr. Rauf came to the notice of British investigators who traced telephone calls between him and people in Britain who were under surveillance, the official said.

“There were frequent calls from there and to him,” the official said, adding that the British had asked Pakistan to watch Mr. Rauf, who had been under surveillance for a few weeks.

Reuters, quoting unnamed intelligence officials, reported that Mr. Rauf was arrested on Aug. 9, hours before the arrests in Britain.

He remains in custody, appearing before a judge over the weekend, said a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, Tasneem Aslam.

Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said Tuesday that Britain had not requested Mr. Rauf’s extradition. Pakistan does not have an extradition treaty with Britain, but Mr. Sherpao said that international conventions covered such requests and that a special case could be made.

The senior official here said that a senior Qaeda agent still at large was the mastermind of the plot and that Mr. Rauf was the main contact for the would-be bombers in Britain. Pakistani officials have implied that the Qaeda figure is based in Afghanistan, but the official said he was not Afghan, adding that all the group’s top leaders were from Arab countries. He also said a third country was connected because of the financial trail.

Mr. Rauf, reportedly 29 years old, was born in Pakistan and lived nearly all his life in England, until 2002, when he returned to Pakistan after having been implicated in the stabbing death of an uncle in Britain, the official said. Mr. Rauf was arrested in Bahawalpur, the official said.

His connection to Jaish-e-Mohammed would explain much about any involvement with the bombing plot or Al Qaeda. The group was founded by Maulana Masood Azhar in February 2000 to support mujahedeen fighting in Kashmir and Afghanistan. It became closely associated with the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

As Pakistan cracked down on jihadi groups after Sept. 11, 2001, Jaish-e-Mohammed changed its name and split into two groups. Those groups were also banned because of continued pressure from the United States. A splinter group of Jaish-e-Mohammed was blamed for masterminding an assassination attempt against President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan in 2003.

Absar Aslam contributed reporting from Islamabad for this article,Arif Jamal fromLahore, Pakistan, and David Rohde fromNew York.