How Was Rashid Rauf Arrested?

/in /by

Atrios links to Andrew Sullivan being skeptical  who links to Craig Murray being even more skeptical. And Murray raised a point that I had raised earlier. Here’s Murray:

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance forover a year – like thousands of other British Muslims. And not justMuslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the needfor early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazingplot to blow up multiple planes – which, rather extraordinarily, hadnot turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogatorsof the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing likecanaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the mostextraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to givethe interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effortto stop or avert torture. What it doesn’t give is the truth.

Now I’m frankly not as skeptical as Murray; Meteor Blades has made a pretty convincing case, after all, that we need to be skeptical in all directions (and I believe Meteor Blades unquestioningly). But I do want to raise a question I’ve already asked.

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  2. Kagro X says:

    Same thing I said a year ago: It reminds me of the scene from Spies Like Us where Chevy Chase hurriedly tells his interrogators, â€Uhhhh… I was sent here to assassinate your Premier!â€

  3. Meteor Blades says:

    One of the joys of being skeptical in every direction is that, no matter what happens, I can say â€I told you so!â€

  4. Sara says:

    Some details on the actual arrest are in Reuters dispatches from both Pakistan and India, posted today.

    Rashid Rauf apparently belonged to a Kashmir specific organization until about a year ago. The Reuters dispatch has bits from an interview with Rauf’s Father-in-Law. He apparently switched to al-Qaeda as he became more anti-American/Israel, and less focused on Kashmir.

    One of the Pakistan papers has a team of British investigators arriving yesterday in Islamabad to question all of the detainees, determine actual identity and nationality, and then decide whether to petition for extradition.

    Difficult to read into the dispatches any actual sequence of events leading up to the Rauf arrest. They do note the decision to arrest others was made by Pakistan after it was learned Rauf had phoned another current detainee as he was being arrested, and that led to the additional arrests.

    India seems to be interested in this as some of the arrestees are members of groups believed responsible for the recent Bombay train bombing. Pakistan has apparently also placed several leaders of successor organizations to LeT, (Lashkar-e-Taiba) which was declared illegal in 2002, under house arrest. They continued to operate under changed names.

    Just keep watching the Pakistan and Indian press — they are publishing various details.

  5. Beel says:

    â€Some journalists†would probably be all over this story. As we can see already, they might be working for Reuters. Or maybe they post on Next Hurrah. They don’t seem to be working for the usual sources.

  6. William Ockham says:

    The sad truth is that this Administration just doesn’t care about the difference between real threats and â€aspirational†terrorists. They know that the only way to maintain their grip on power is to pump up the fear. I predict we’ll see at least one more â€major†terror plot â€foiled†between now and November. Will it be a real threat? We will have no way of knowing.