Suspect in Airline Bomb Case Reportedly Released

The brother of a man identified by Pakistani authorities as a key suspect in a plot to blow up transatlantic jetliners was reportedly released from custody Wednesday, apparently after British police concluded there was insufficient evidence to charge him with a crime.

Tayib Rauf, a 22-year-old baker, was released from the Birmingham, England, detention center where he had been held for two weeks, Britain’s Press Assn. said.

The Rauf family has been central to a case authorities have described as the potentially deadliest terrorist plot uncovered since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The arrest in Pakistan of Birmingham resident Rashid Rauf, Tayib’s 25-year-old brother, was said to be the trigger that led to the detention of about two dozen people in Britain, some suspected of planning to smuggle liquids to assemble explosives onboard jetliners bound for the U.S.

Pakistani authorities have called the elder Rauf brother a key figure in the suspected plot. He has been linked with at least two prominent militants in Pakistan, and authorities there said he acknowledged under interrogation that he had met with “an active Al Qaeda leader” near the Pakistani-Afghan border.

Human rights organizations have said that admission was probably obtained under torture.

Friends and relatives in Birmingham have described the family as deeply religious, law-abiding owners of a local bakery and confectionery.

Tayib Rauf had been seen as a potentially important figure primarily because of his family. His father, Abdul, the founder of a Britain-based Islamic charity that is being investigated for possible links to terrorist financing, is reportedly one of as many as 17 suspects, including Rashid Rauf, being held for questioning in Pakistan, according to British media reports.

Authorities there and in Britain are looking at whether money raised by the charity, Crescent Relief, may have been diverted to fund terrorist activity. Charity officials have said all the money raised went for legitimate purposes.

Prosecutors on Monday charged eight men with conspiracy to commit murder and terrorism and three other suspects with lesser charges. Authorities won court permission Wednesday to continue to hold eight other suspects for questioning through the end of the month, and a ninth detainee, Umair Hussain, was to be detained for another day.

Another suspect was released previously.

The judge’s decision to allow more time to question the remaining suspects marks the first application of Britain’s new anti-terrorism law, which allows police up to 28 days to hold suspects while trying to build a case. Previously, detainees were released after 14 days.

Authorities would not comment on why they had elected to release Tayib Rauf before the deadline, nor would they even confirm he had been arrested.

Rashid Rauf left Birmingham in 2002 after the family home was searched by police in connection with the stabbing death that year of his uncle, Mohammed Saeed, 54. Rauf was reportedly a suspect in that killing, which was being investigated as a potential “honor” killing.

In Pakistan, Rauf had been under surveillance for several months before he was arrested in Bahawalpur, a town in Punjab province. Pakistani officials said he had met with Matiur Rehman, Pakistan’s most-wanted terrorism suspect and the reputed head of Al Qaeda’s operations there.

Rauf is related by marriage to Maulana Masoon Azhar, a Muslim cleric with suspected links to anti-American attacks since the 1990s.