Suspected Atlantic airline plotter faces deportation

A key suspect behind an alleged plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic appeared last night to be a step closer to being extradited to Britain after a court in Pakistan dropped charges against him there.

Rashid Rauf, a British-Pakistani whom West Midlands police also want to speak to in connection with his uncle's murder in Birmingham, was kept in custody pending extradition proceedings by Britain.

"He is being illegally held and they want to deport him," said Hashmat Habib, who represented Rauf at a hearing in an anti-terrorism court earlier yesterday. Habib said Rauf had been taken to Adiala jail near Rawalpindi.

But a senior official in Islamabad with close knowledge of the case insisted that Rauf would not be deported soon. "A legal procedure is being followed and sudden deportation is not on the cards," he said.

British officials said last night there was no intention to try to extradite Rauf "without due process".

Rauf went to Pakistan after the murder in Birmingham of his uncle, Mohammed Saeed, in August 2002. Following the fatal stabbing, Rauf settled in Bahawalpur, southern Punjab, where his relatives had a close friend who owned a madrasa.

He was arrested in Pakistan in August 2006, shortly after British police and MI5 uncovered an apparent al-Qaida-inspired plot in Britain to bomb passenger jets crossing the Atlantic.

Rauf's arrest was described as the trigger that led investigators to start an immediate pre-emptive arrest operation in Britain and to introduce stringent security measures, particularly at airports.

Aftab Khan Sherpao, the Pakistani interior minister, said at the time: "We arrested him [Rauf] from the border area and on his disclosure we shared the information with British authorities, which led to further arrests in Britain."

Pakistani officials also claimed Rauf had links with al-Qaida.

Pakistani police said they discovered 29 bottles of hydrogen peroxide, a household chemical which can be used to make bombs, in a Rawalpindi house where Rauf was staying. His family in Pakistan said the charges against him were "cooked up". One family member told the Guardian he had bought the hydrogen peroxide to bleach his beard.

The terrorism charges were thrown out at an earlier court hearing, and since then he has been detained on charges of impersonation and producing false identity papers.

Instead of seeking his extradition on terrorism charges, Britain has made an application in relation to the murder of his uncle.

The Crown Prosecution Service, which sent lawyers to Pakistan this year to try to smooth the way for the extradition, would only say last night that the process to send Rauf back to the UK had begun.

A source said that once Rauf was back in the UK he would be questioned by West Midlands police about the murder allegation but could be questioned about "other matters" such as alleged terrorism.

Although the UK and Pakistan do not have an extradition agreement it can be done on a case by case basis. Islamabad, a UK official said, can be reluctant to extradite people to the west for terrorism allegations, but is more willing to do so for murder charges.

Human rights activist Amna Janjua said she had spoken with Rauf's relatives. "They are fearing the authorities will deport him to jail," she said. "His wife is so upset she has been taken to hospital." Janjua accused Britain of being involved in an illegal deportation. "He is being sold, or the government is trying to please the west," she said.

Habib was standing in for Rauf's normal lawyer, Shaukat Aziz Siddiqi, who has been jailed as part of a crackdown on lawyers under the 13-day-old emergency rule.

Last month Siddiqi told the Guardian that he did not expect his client would get due process. "Had there been no accusation from the Britishers, he would have been acquitted by the courts by now. The only influence on this case is that he is wanted by the British," he said.

The Guardian reported in March that in increasingly tense discussions, ministers in Pakistan asked for something in return for Rauf. In a proposed swap, they were calling for the extradition of up to eight people living in the UK who they claim were involved in an uprising in the oil-rich western province of Baluchistan.