E-Paper
Video footage shows suspect
Supermarket video footage obtained shows a man claimed by family friends to be one of the 23 suspects arrested.
Supermarket video footage obtained shows a man claimed by family friends to be one of the 23 suspects arrested in a foiled attempt to blow up as many as 10 trans-Atlantic jetliners.
The footage was taken about two hours before Tayib Rauf was arrested in a pre-dawn police raid that also detained his brother, Maroof.
British police did not comment on the tape and no photographs of Rauf have been released, but the owner of the store where the closed-circuit footage was taken said it was Rauf.
The footage was obtained on Monday from Mohmad Nazam, the owner of the New Dadyal Cash and Carry.
In an interview, Nazam said Rauf, 22, had come to the shop to collect a check in payment for an order that Nazam had made from the Rauf's family business, Classic Confectionary Suppliers.
In releasing the footage to the AP, Nazam, a close friend to the Rauf family, said it was proof that Rauf was not the plotter he has been made out to be.
"Does this look like the kind of a person planning such a plot?" Nazam, a former Birmingham city council member, said of the footage. "He doesn't look like he's about to blow himself up."
Rauf's other brother, Rashid, was arrested in Pakistan and is believed to have been the mastermind behind the alleged plot, broken up in a series of police raids on August 10.
