Al-Qaeda No 3 behind UK terror plot

Islamabad: Al-Qaeda's No 3 was the mastermind behind the plot to blow up transatlantic flights, Pakistan daily Dawn quoted an intelligence source as saying on Wednesday.

"It is not Osama bin Laden and it's not Aiman-al-Zawahiri, but someone close to the rank of Abu Faraj Al-Libbi," the source said.

It is an al-Qaeda connection, the source said on the condition of anonymity.

"It is the top hierarchy," he told the paper.

Abu Faraj Al-Libbi, a third-tier al-Qaeda operative, was believed to have been involved in an attempt to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and was arrested in May 2005.

The intelligence source said the plot to blow up US-bound planes was similar in pattern to the one hatched to kill Musharraf.

"There was a mastermind, there was a planner and there were the executioners," he said.

The source told Dawn that al-Qaeda's link to the London airline bombing plot had been established.

Stressing the importance of key person Rashid Rauf's arrest, he said that without his capture the plot would not have been foiled.

He acknowledged that there had been some hype about the bombing plots but said the plotters were in the planning stage and were procuring chemicals and equipment. They were not in the execution stage, he said.

The source said that Rauf had gone to Britain in 1981 when he was less than a year old.

He returned to Pakistan in 2002 and had since been living here but the source declined to say when and where Rauf had been arrested.

The source said that Pakistan was withholding the information due to British legal sensitivities and that a team of their legal experts was in Pakistan to discuss the case.

He said that Pakistani security agencies had arrested six to seven suspects, including Rashid Rauf.

"This is an ongoing operation and there could be more arrests," he said.

The source agreed that some of the London plotters might have come to Pakistan but said that Islamabad was awaiting information, including antecedents and passport details of the plotters to ascertain facts.