London plot contact is settled in Pak

WASHINGTON: Pakistan has confirmed that Rashid Rauf, the main figure arrested in the London bombing plot, had married and settled in Bahawalpur, a Punjab town. Bahawalpur is the home to the notorious jihadist group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, the New York Times reported.

While Pakistani officials said he used to at least be an active member of the organisation, unnamed members of Jaish-e-Mohammed suggested that Rauf had always stayed a member of the group throughout its reincarnations, the Times stated.

Rauf, a British citizen born in Pakistan, returned from Britain in 2002 to settle in Bahawalpur, where he married and had children. Bahawalpur is in Punjab province, far from Mirpur in the Pakistan-administered Kashmir, the town Rauf's family comes from, officials in Islamabad said.

The New York Times carried another report from Bahawalpur, quoting Hafiz Allah Bukhsh, the father of the founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed, as saying Rauf was married to a sister of one of his younger sons' wife.

A former Pakistani official with close ties to intelligence agencies confirmed the details and said Rauf had "longstanding links with Jaish-e-Mohammed and also had Al Qaeda connections, the daily said.

"Rauf became a central figure in all this," the New York Times quoted a senior Pakistan government official who insisted on anonymity because of the investigation. "He was a connecting figure and central to it."

Rauf came to the notice of British investigators who traced telephone calls between him and people in Britain who were under surveillance, the official said.

"There were frequent calls from there and to him," the official said, adding that the British had asked Pakistan to watch Rauf, who had been under surveillance for a few weeks.