Officials on both sides of the Atlantic say the arrest by Pakistan of Rashid Rauf, a suspected key figure in the plot, sparked fears among British and U.S. investigators monitoring the plot that suspects back in the U.K. could be alerted to the fact that they were under heavy surveillance from British police and intelligence services. According to one U.S. law-enforcement source, after Rauf’s arrest, U.S. authorities learned that a message had passed from Pakistan to the alleged plotters that their scheme might have been compromised but that they should proceed with the attack anyway.
Faced with the accelerating possibilities that either an attack might move forward or that the formidable security operation that was keeping track of the alleged plotters might be rumbled, U.K. authorities decided they had to move, according to U.S. and U.K. officials. Because the plot was rolled up earlier than the British wanted—and officials indicated that the British only wanted a few more days of surveillance—this has potentially complicated efforts by police to compile a compelling criminal case against more than 20 suspects, none of whom have been charged yet with any criminal offence.
Under antiterror legislation tightened by Parliament after last year’s London transport suicide bombings, police can ask the courts to order suspects to be held in custody for questioning for periods of up to 28 days before they have to be charged. In London late Wednesday, a judge granted extensions to British authorities so that they may hold most of the suspects for questioning until Aug. 23.
The early crackdown also may have disappointed U.S. and U.K. intelligence officials who, according to some sources familiar with the long-running British investigation, were hoping that further monitoring of the suspects might lead them to terrorist ringleaders or masterminds, identities unknown, whom investigators believe are operating from Pakistani cities and tribal areas along the Afghan border—the same general areas where authorities believe what remains of the core leadership of Al Qaeda are hiding out.
An official familiar with the views of British intelligence said that the investigation that ultimately led to the alleged airline plot began before last year’s London transport bombings. Two U.S. counterterrorism officials said they understood elements of the U.K. investigation may have begun as early as 2002 or 2003.
It is unclear why the Pakistanis moved when they did to arrest Rauf, described by counterterrorism officials as “a mastermind” but not necessarily the ultimate mastermind of the plot to bring down transatlantic airliners. A U.S. official familiar with intelligence reporting on the investigation said that Rauf had been wanted for questioning for some time in connection with the unsolved murder of an uncle in Birmingham, England.
U.S. and U.K. officials indicated that one of the key suspects arrested on the British end of the operation was Rashid Rauf’s younger brother Tayib Rauf. He was picked up in Birmingham, where both Raufs grew up and where their family runs a cake and confectionary business. U.S. law-enforcement officials have indicated that investigators are examining whether the cake business, as well as a London-based Muslim charity of which the Rauf brothers’ father once served as a director, may have been used to channel financial support to the alleged airline plotters.
According to a U.K. source familiar with intelligence reporting on the Raufs, some British officials consider Tayib Rauf to be a possible major figure in the jihadi underground in Britain, possibly even its leader. The source indicated that authorities believe Tayib may be connected to a suspect in an unsuccessful London transport bombing attack two weeks after last year’s July 7 suicide bombings of three London subway trains and a red double-decker bus that killed more than 50 commuters.
Despite the murder inquiry involving Rashid Rauf, a U.S. counterterror official said that the Pakistanis apparently arrested the older brother not because of the murder case but because of the alleged airline-bombing plot, whose denouement British authorities believed they were supposed to be choreographing. The official, and a U.K. official familiar with the investigation, said they could not explain why the Pakistanis moved forward when they did.
Earlier this week, an NBC News report alleged that British authorities were under pressure from American officials to arrest the suspects sooner than U.K. authorities wanted to. The NBC report quoted a senior British official saying that U.S. officials had warned that if Rashid Rauf wasn’t arrested immediately by Pakistan, the United States would “render” him.
NBC quoted White House counterterrorism advisor Frances Fragos Townsend insisting that there was “unprecedented cooperation and coordination between the U.S., the U.K. and Pakistani officials throughout the case … There was no disagreement by U.S. officials.” A U.K. official familiar with the views of British intelligence agencies said they were “unaware” of any transatlantic tensions.
Some current and former American counterterrorism officials acknowledge, however, that their U.K. counterparts appear to be miffed at the extent of early public comments by high-ranking American officials about possible Al Qaeda links to the alleged airline-bombing plot. Other American officials say that their British counterparts, already sore about alleged leaks by U.S. officials during previous sensitive terrorism inquiries (including investigations into last year’s transport bombings), were slow to clue in some of their U.S. counterparts about key details of the latest purported plot.
American and British officials say they continue to investigate what they believe will turn out to be some kind of significant link between the alleged U.K.-based airline plotters—all of whom are British citizens—and the central Al Qaeda leadership, which is believed to still be led by Osama bin Laden and his fanatical Egyptian sidekick, Ayman al-Zawahiri. But proving such connections to previous U.K.-based plots has been elusive; although U.K. investigations, whose results were published in some detail by the British government and a parliamentary oversight committee, established that some of the bombers who attacked London’s public transportation in July 2005 visited Pakistan, the investigations never firmly established a connection to the Al Qaeda leadership.
Even after Al Qaeda’s increasingly sophisticated media operation recently released a video that spliced together a “martyrdom video” from one of the July 7 bombers with a fresh Zawahiri diatribe praising last year’s London attacks, U.K. and U.S. intelligence officials insisted this was not proof that Al Qaeda was behind last year’s attacks. Instead, the officials theorized, Zawahiri might have been trying to take credit for events Al Qaeda had inspired rather than directed.
Over the last three years, British authorities, with help from the United States and Pakistan, have investigated at least four or five major terror plots—including the July 7 transport attacks—each with murky connections to Pakistan and strong hints, but elusive evidence, of possible involvement of the fugitive Al Qaeda leadership. If British intelligence had hoped that a few more days surveillance of the alleged airline plotters would get them closer to an answer as to whether the plots have a common source, then, in this case they were evidently disappointed.
