Rashid Rauf

Rashid Rauf (ca. 1981 – 22 November 2008) was an alleged Al-Qaeda operative. He was a dual citizen of Britain and Pakistan who was arrested in Bhawalpur, Pakistan in connection with the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot in August 2006, a day before some arrests were made in Britain. The Pakistani Interior Minister, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, claimed that "he is an al Qaeda operative with linkages in Afghanistan". He was said to have been be one of the ringleaders of the alleged plot. In December 2006, the anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi found no evidence that he had been involved in terrorist activities, and his charges were downgraded to forgery and possession of explosives.

Rauf was born in England to Pakistani parents, and brought up in Birmingham where his father was a baker. Rauf was married to a relative of Maulana Masood Azhar, who is the head and founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed, an Islamist militant group in Pakistan.

Rauf escaped from custody in December 2007. He was reportedly killed by a US drone attack in Pakistan on 22 November 2008, carried out by the CIA's Special Activities Division. The report was based on communications intercepted from militants in North Waziristan. His family initially denied that he was killed. While CIA and Pakistan intelligence officials maintained that Rauf was killed in the airstrike, the news site Long War Journal believed otherwise.

On 11 August 2009, Asia Times Online claimed that Rauf was alive and living in North Waziristan. On 8 July 2010, however, a US counterterrorism official told the New York Daily News that Rauf was killed. Some of Rauf's associates also believe that he never escaped from prison in 2007 and that he might have been dead long before the airstrike; Hashmat Malik, a lawyer representing the family of Rauf's wife Umat al-Warood, has also argued that Rauf was probably killed during a prison shootout at the time of his alleged escape. British security sources also believed he might still be alive.

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