British Al Qaeda terror mastermind ‘killed’ by US strikes is... STILL ALIVE

Sep 13 2009 by Ben Goldby, Sunday Mercury

Reports that Rauf may still be alive first emerged in April after a militant detained during a raid in Belgium claimed that he had been trained by the Brummie terror chief.

Shortly after the November strike, Raufs lawyer claimed he was still alive, and that Taliban fighters had been in touch with him.

In April, the former Washwood Heath High School student was implicated as the mastermind behind a failed plot to conduct attacks at a shopping centre in Manchester on Easter Sunday.

Rauf fled to the tribal areas of North Western Pakistan in April 2002, as West Midlands Police tried to question him over the murder of his uncle, Mohammed Saeed, in Alum Rock.

He married a relative of Maulana Masood Azhar, the notorious founder of Kashmiri terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed, in 2003.

Intelligence reports say he took an active role in planning terror spectaculars and was the ringleader of the liquid bomb plot to blow up US-bound jets over the Atlantic Ocean.

In August 2006, as spooks were monitoring the airline bomb plot, Rauf, who was under surveillance by British, Pakistani and American secret services, was arrested on the instruction of the CIA, forcing MI5 to arrest the London-based fanatics who were due to carry out the attack.

Although charges over the transatlantic plot were later dropped against Rauf, the CIA continued to track his activities and he was held by Pakistani police as detectives in Birmingham sought his extradition over his uncles murder.

But in December 2007 Rauf gave guards the slip after a hearing and fled back to the lawless tribal regions of North Western Pakistan.

ben.goldby@sundaymercury.net