Two police officers have been arrested for allowing the escape of a British-Pakistani suspect in an alleged plot to blow up trans-Atlantic jetliners, officials said yesterday.
Rashid Rauf was arrested in Pakistan in August last year before the plot was foiled. Britain has been seeking his extradition, both as a suspect in the 2002 killing of his uncle there, and to question him as a "key person" in the airplane plot.
He was presented before a judge in the capital, Islamabad, on Saturday in connection with the extradition proceedings, but on his way back to jail, he tricked police into stopping to let him pray at a mosque, then slipped out the back door, police said.
A police official speaking on condition of anonymity said the officers have been arrested for negligence and were being probed for possible links with Rauf's two uncles, who also have been taken into custody for questioning.
The incident is an embarrassment for the government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who made Pakistan a key ally of the US in its war on terror following Sept. 11, 2001.
One of Pakistan's leading newspapers, the News, reported yesterday that Rauf's uncle Rafique had been in touch with one of the arrested policemen.
It also said the officers let another of Rauf's uncles, Zahoor, talk them into letting him drive Rauf back to the jail in his own car. The officers had lunch with Rauf at a McDonald's restaurant in Rawalpindi, then unlocked his handcuffs when he went inside the mosque, the report said.
The newspaper also reported that the guards didn't immediately inform their bosses about the incident, and that they searched for Rauf for hours before reporting the matter.
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