E-Paper
Police helped Rauf escape: report
Pakistani authorities say that police has in the escape of a terror suspect, who was allegedly involved in a plot to blow up US-bound airliners in UK.
Police conspired in the dramatic escape of terror suspect Rashid Rauf, who was allegedly involved in a plot to blow up US-bound airliners in Britain last year, a high-level probe by Pakistani authorities has concluded.
It also dismissed claims by Rauf's police guards that he slipped away after being allowed to pray in a mosque while being taken back to his prison from here to nearby Rawalpindi.
Rauf's escape on December 15 after being produced in a court in Islamabad has become a major embarrassment for the government of President Pervez Musharraf. Despite claims by caretaker Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz Khan that police had gathered some leads, authorities are yet to trace the fugitive who has been linked to Al-Qaeda.
The report of the probe committee into the escape, submitted to the government on Wednesday, disputed claims by Islamabad police that Rauf escaped while he was being taken from here to Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi. It also described the claim by his two police guards that he mysteriously disappeared from the mosque as "concocted".
