Guards for escaped terrorist arrested in Pakistan

AP/Houston Chronicle:

Two police officers have been arrested for allowing the escape of a British suspect in an alleged plot to blow up trans-Atlantic jetliners, officials said today.

Britain has been seeking Rashid Rauf's extradition, both to question him as a "key person" in the airplane plot and as a suspect in the 2002 killing of his uncle. He has denied involvement in both cases.

Rauf slipped out the back door of a mosque after tricking police into stopping to let him pray on the way back to jail following a court appearance in Islamabad on Saturday on Britain's extradition request, police said.

A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media, said two officers have been arrested for negligence and were being probed for possible links with Rauf's two uncles, who also have been taken into custody for questioning.

The incident is an embarrassment for President Pervez Musharraf, who made Pakistan a key ally of the United States in its war on terror following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Rauf's lawyer, Hashmat Habib, has called the escape a "mysterious disappearance," saying he never opposed deportation. Habib said police commandos had escorted Rauf on earlier trips to court.

"How can it happen that only two policemen were traveling with him on Saturday?" Habib asked.

One of Pakistan's leading newspapers, The News, reported today that Rauf's uncle Mohammed Rafique had been in touch with one of the arrested policemen. Rafique was arrested in Kashmir this week.

It also said the officers let another of Rauf's uncles, Zahoor, talk them into letting him drive Rauf back to the jail in his own car. The officers had lunch with Rauf at a McDonald's restaurant in Rawalpindi, then unlocked his handcuffs when he went inside the mosque, the report said.

The newspaper also reported that the guards didn't immediately inform their bosses about the incident, and that they searched for Rauf for hours before reporting the matter.

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Negligence is the least of the charges these guys should face. Their conduct is so unprofessional and strange that it suggest collusion. Their arrest should be only the beginning of the investigation into their conduct and their associations.