DID PAKISTAN'S ISI STAGE ESCAPE OF AL QAEDA BIGGIE?

LONDON TIMES:

FRIENDS of Rashid Rauf, the man wanted in Britain for last year’s Al-Qaeda plot to blow up transatlantic airliners, believe that he did not escape from custody last weekend but was kidnapped by Pakistan’s military intelligence agency (ISI). They fear he may be shot.

...The Pakistan government has 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 the murder of an uncle.

The officers had allowed him to stop for lunch at a McDonald’s restaurant and later in the journey permitted him to pray at a mosque. His handcuffs were removed to allow him to pray freely. When the guards entered the mosque to check on the prisoner, he had escaped through another door.

... Their description of his getaway has been met with disbelief throughout Pakistan, with diplomats and commentators asking how a prisoner described by the country’s interior minister as a leading Al-Qaeda operative and held in Pakistan’s highest-security detention unit could be allowed to walk away in broad daylight. Rauf’s lawyer and a close family friend both said last week that they believed he had not escaped but had been taken into secret security-service custody and they feared for his life.

They said they believed the country’s intelligence service did not want him to be extradited to Britain and had in effect kidnapped him to preempt any court decision to deport him. More than 400 opposition activists and Islamic militants have been secretly detained by the security services in this way and Pakistan’s Supreme Court has criticised the policy and ordered the government to free a number of detainees.

... Pakistani officials have said that Rauf was a leading figure in the Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist group, which is believed to have had strong links with Pakistan’s intelligence agencies. The group was behind the hijacking of an Indian Airlines jet in 1999 and the beheading of Daniel Pearl, the American journalist, in February 2002.

Its members have included Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the terrorist from Wanstead, east London, who was later convicted of the kidnap and murder of Pearl.

PAKISTAN IS IN MANY WAYS RIDDLE WRAPPED IN AN ENIGMA WRAPPED IN A MYSTERY. AND ITS INTERESTS SEEM SPLIT:

• LIKE SAUDI ARABIA IT IS A NATION BOTH DEPENDENT ON THE WEST AND LONG ALLIED TO IT, BUT ALSO COMMITTED TO VALUES IMPLACABLY OPPOSED TO THE WEST;

• AND SO MANY OF THE NATION'S INTELLIGENCE APPARATUSES ARE INFILTRATED THAT UNTANGLING IT MIGHT BE IMPOSSIBLE.

• THAT'S WHY WE MUST JUDGE THEM ON THEIR RESULTS.

• SO FAR, MUSHARRAF - AND SAUDI ARABIA - GET C-'S.

• IN 2008, PAKISTAN MUST GAIN CONTROL OF SWAT AND KILL OR CAPTURE OSAMA AND ZAWAHIRI, AND SAUDI ARABIA MUST STOP THEIR JIHADIS FROM ENTERING IRAQ.

I THINK THEY WILL - BUT I'M NOT HOLDING MY BREATH AND WE SHOULDN'T DEPEND ON THEM COMING THROUGH FOR US.