Police find suitcase with ‘everything you need’ to make a bomb

POLICE investigating the alleged airliner bomb plot have found a suitcase containing components needed to make an explosive device, it was reported last night.

The discovery is thought to have been made in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, where officers are combing King’s Wood for traces of explosives or evidence of explosive tests.

The BBC reported a police source as saying the suitcase contained “everything you would need to make an improvised device”.

Scotland Yard has refused to comment on the reports.

Earlier, intelligence officials in Pakistan claimed Rashid Rauf — a key suspect in the alleged plot — had links with an outlawed Pakistani militant group and met al-Qaida figures in Pakistan before his arrest.

Rauf, a British national and the brother of one of those detained in Britain, was held in Pakistan last week and is widely believed to have triggered the police operation to smash the alleged plot.

Officials claimed he had been in contact — through intermediaries — with a high ranking al-Qaida figure in Afghanistan, and that he had met al-Qaida figures inside Pakistan. He also had links to the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed and was related by marriage to its leader, it was alleged.

The alleged plot involved plans to blow up passenger jets heading from Britain to the US using liquid-based explosive devices hidden in hand luggage.

Questioning of suspects detained in Pakistan over the alleged plot revealed al-Qaida number two Ayman al-Zawahri likely approved the plan, a senior Pakistani intelligence official said

Other intelligence officials have said Rauf had been in contact with the purported number three al-Qaida leader in Afghanistan.

Authorities are searching for three more suspects, a British Muslim of Afghan origin, an Eritrean national and a Pakistani, that suspects already detained in Britain and Pakistan have told interrogators are in Pakistan.

An intelligence official and a relative said Rauf has links with Jaish-e-Mohammed and is related by marriage to its leader.

Hafiz Sohaib, who teaches in the eastern town of Bhawalpur, said his sister married a man by the name of Khalid Rauf three years ago. Police told Mr Sohaib’s family Khalid was an alias for Rashid Rauf.

He said police detained Rauf as he tried to leave the town on a bus on August 9, two days before suspects were rounded up in Britain.

Mr Sohaib said his other sister is married to the brother of Maulana Masood Azhar, the head of the Jaish-e-Mohammed.

But a spokesman for the group yesterday said Rauf “had never been a member. We have not even seen his face”.

Britain is expected to seek the extradition of Rauf, who moved to Pakistan shortly after his uncle was stabbed to death in 2002.

He was reportedly a suspect in that murder.

* A woman on a transatlantic flight diverted to Boston for security concerns on Wednesday passed several notes to crew members and urinated on the cabin floor.

An affidavit filed yesterday says she made comments the crew believed were references to al-Qaida and the September 11 attacks.

Catherine Mayo, 59, of Braintree, Vermont, was to appear in court last night on a charge of interfering with a flight crew after disrupting the flight from London to Washington, DC.