Times Of India : ISI plotted Rauf's disappearance?

ISI plotted Rauf's disappearance?

December 23, 2007

LONDON: Terror suspect Rashid Rauf did not escape from custody last week but was kidnapped by Pakistans intelligence agency as part of an "organised disappearance" plot, a media report said on Sunday quoting people close to the man arrested in connection with the plan to bomb US-bound trans-Atlantic airliners last year.

The official description of Rauf's getaway has been met with disbelief, many wondering how an alleged Al-Qaida operative held in Pakistans highest-security detention unit could manage to walk away from custody.

The authorities in Pakistan have blamed junior policemen escorting Rauf back to jail after a court hearing in Islamabad where he was fighting moves to extradite him to Britain in connection with a murder case.

Raufs lawyer and a close family friend have said that they believed he had been taken into custody by Pakistan's secret security-service and they feared for his life. They believed the country’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence(ISI) did not want him to be extradited to Britain and had abducted him to pre-empt any court decision to deport him.

Hashmat Habib, Raufs lawyer, said his client was being victimised because the Pakistani authorities have been forced to drop all charges against Rauf over the transatlantic terror plot.

"In my estimate it’s an organised disappearance. They don’t want to hand him over. He was fixed up and the government is now afraid that he would become an embarrassment if sent to the UK because they hyped up his involvement," Habib was quoted as saying by The Sunday Times on Sunday.

Khalid Khawaja, a former Pakistan intelligence agent who counts Osama Bin Laden as a friend, believed that Rauf might have been "taken away by the ISI" and feared that his friend might be shot dead while "on the run".