Pakistan Says Al-qaida Link to Plot Found

Pakistani security sources said yesterday that al-Qaida's "number three" was behind the alleged plot to blow up several transatlantic flights leaving the UK.

They also suggested Britain wanted to allow the plotters to try a dry run, without explosives, so as to gather more evidence but was persuaded to intervene earlier by the US and Pakistani authorities.

British detectives are in Islamabad working with the Pakistani security services with regard to Rashid Rauf, the Briton held in connection with the alleged plot. No decision has been made as to whether he will be extradited to Britain.

Abu Faraj al-Libbi, who after Osama bin Laden and the Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahiri, is suspected of being al-Qaida's third in command, has been named by Pakistani security sources as the main planner of the alleged plot, according to Dawn, a daily newspaper. He has also been accused of involvement in a plot to assassinate Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, and was arrested last year and turned over to the US.

A security official said: "There was a mastermind, there was a planner and there were the executioners." He claimed the al-Qaida link to the alleged plot in Britain had been established and that it had been at the planning stage when it was interrupted in London last week.

Mr Rauf, who has dual nationality, is being held for interrogation after his arrest in Bahawalpur last week. He has appeared once in court and can be held initially for 28 days, a process that can be repeated for up to a year.

Further details of Mr Rauf's movements emerged last night as the father of Masood Azhar, head of the banned militant organisation Jaish-e-Mohammad, which is fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, told Reuters he had left the movement to join rivals more interested in al-Qaida's anti-western message. "He was a member of our group but later deserted and joined our rivals," Hafiz Allah Bukhsh said at Jaish's headquarters in Bahawalpur. "Our cause is Kashmir, while their main cause is Afghanistan. They are anti-American but we are not," he said.

A man claiming to be Mr Rauf's brother-in-law said police detained him as he tried to leave the town on a bus to the nearby city of Multan on August 9. Hafiz Mohammed Sohaib said his sister married a man by the name of Khalid Rauf three years ago. Police told Mr Sohaib's family that Khalid was an alias for Rashid Rauf. Several days after his arrest, police commandos and plainclothes officers raided Mr Rauf's home and confiscated a computer and identity documents, Mr Sohaib told Associated Press.

"They introduced him to us as Rashid Rauf," said Mr Sohaib, who teaches at an Islamic seminary, or madrassa. He said Mr Rauf had never attended the madrassa and would pray five times daily at home with his two children. "We cannot believe that he can do anything like this of which he is accused. We could not say by the way he lived that he could be linked with such people," he said, adding that he knew him only as a refrigerator salesman.

In London, district judges last night gave anti-terrorist police extensions to continue holding the 23 suspects arrested in raids in London, High Wycombe and Birmingham last week.