Friends of Rashid Rauf believe that he did not escape from custody last weekend, but was kidnapped by PakistanÂ’s secret agencies, according to a report published in The Sunday Times of London. Two junior policemen have been blamed for the escape, as they were escorting Rauf back to jail after a court hearing on moves to extradite him to Britain in connection with the murder of an uncle.The officers apparently allowed Rauf to stop for lunch at a restaurant and later permitted him to offer prayers 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. The weekly states that the policemenÂ’s description of RaufÂ’s getaway has been met with disbelief throughout Pakistan, with diplomats and commentators asking how a prisoner described by the countryÂ’s interior minister as a leading Al Qaeda operative and held in the countryÂ’s highest-security detention unit could be allowed to walk away in broad daylight.
RaufÂ’s lawyer and a close family friend both said last week that they believed he had not escaped but had been taken into custody by secret agencies and they feared for his life. They said they believed the agencies did not want Rauf to be extradited to Britain and had in effect kidnapped him to preempt any court decision to deport him.
Khalid Khawaja, a former intelligence agent who counts Osama Bin Laden as a friend, said he had shared a cell with Rauf and had become close to him and his family. He said Rauf was a simple man who did not have the wherewithal to plot an escape. He said he believed that Rauf might have been “taken away” by the agencies and feared that his friend might be shot dead while “on the run”, The Sunday Times reported. “He was a high-value prisoner wanted by the British. How could he just get a chance to run away like this? It is not possible without the active involvement of the government. Now they have said he ran away. If he’s found killed no one will question it because he ran away,” he said.
Victimised: Hashmat Habib, Rauf’s lawyer, said his client was being victimised because the Pakistani authorities had been forced to drop all charges against Rauf over the transatlantic flight plot. “In my estimate it’s an organised disappearance. They don’t want to hand him over. He’s an innocent man. 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. He was not involved in terrorism,” he said.