The Guardian has a lenghty piece about alleged London Planes Plot mastermind Rashid Rauf.

The lawyer for the accused now says the former Birmingham, England resident didn't escape his Rawalpindi jail cell in the traditional prison break sense or that his guards were bribed, but rather that he was kidnapped by a clandestine arm of the ISI. 

"It wasn't an escape from custody," says his lawyer, Hashmat Ali Habib. "You could call it a 'mysterious disappearance' if you like, but not an escape. The Pakistanis are simply not interested in handing him over to the British. They never have been, although it is not clear why not."

What is clear is that in a country where ties of family and faith can mean more than duty or the letter of the law, where intelligence agencies stand accused of operating like terrorists and where terrorist gangs are the creation of those same agencies, nothing can be taken for granted in the strange disappearance of Rashid Rauf.

In December 2006, a Pakistani judge threw out the terrorism charges against Rauf, charging him instead with possession of explosive material and document fraud. In November 2007 it was announced that Rauf would be extradited to Britain to face murder charges there. He disappeared on December 14th after stopping at a McDonalds drive-in and then a mosque — en route from a court room back to the Adiala Jail. 

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