Rauf masterminded plot to bomb shopping centres in Manchester

Rashid Rauf, an al-Qaeda member who fled to his native country Pakistan from Britain seven years ago to evade arrest, is believed to have masterminded the plot to bomb shopping centres in Manchester over Easter, a media claimed on Sunday.

Rauf, identified by Britain's intelligence agency Mi5, as al-Qaeda's 'Director of Operations' in Europe, is suspected of planning the bombing as part of a wider "master plan" for a number of attacks on cities across the Continent, 'The Sunday Times' reported.

The report came despite Pakistani intelligence officials' claim that Rauf was killed last year when missiles fired from a CIA predator drone destroyed a mud-built bungalow in a village in Pakistan's troubled North Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

A senior Scotland Yard official said one of the 14 suspects arrested by Belgian police last December had confessed that he had been "personally tasked" by Rauf to carry out the bombing.

In an interview with Mi5, he disclosed that Rauf, who fled to Pakistan seven years ago, had ordered a series of European attacks.

Multiple cells, comprising at least 12 terrorists each, were dispatched last year from Pakistan's tribal areas to conduct a series of atrocities in the UK, France, Belgium and elsewhere. The cells have been acting under the direct orders of 27-year-old Rauf.

The plan was set in motion just weeks before the US Predator missile strike targeted Rauf in a remote Pakistani village. According to the report, officials were still unclear whether Rauf survived the attack last November.

The disclosure came as a minister in the Gordon Brown Cabinet on Saturday night sought to distance Britain's foreign policy from America's use of pilotless drones to kill al-Qaeda suspects in Pakistan's tribal belt.

Sadiq Khan, the Community Cohesion minister who has just returned from Islamabad, said he had listened to the "anger and frustration" of students in Islamabad over the US strikes.

"It's quite clear in many Pakistani eyes that the UK is considered in the same terms as the US," he said. "We want to explain that our foreign policy, especially on the issue of drone attacks, is distinct from US foreign policy."

Last week 12 men, including 11 Pakistanis on student visas, were arrested in raids on Manchester, Liverpool and Clithoroe, Lancashire.

They were under full-time surveillance. Their homes were bugged, their telephone calls were intercepted and they were followed night and day by officers from Mi5's A4 surveillance division, the report said.

Rauf, born in Pakistan but brought up in the Midlands here, has already been linked to a series of alleged high-profile Islamist terror plots, including the failed July 21 suicide bomb plot that targeted London in 2005.

A few months earlier, Rauf had sent several cells to Europe to carry out a series of linked attacks which were driven by al-Qaeda's "hatred" for US president Barack Obama, the report said.

Of the 12 suspects arrested on Wednesday, police have released one person. The others are still being grilled.

Two of them worked as security guards at the Homebase DIY -- Do It Yourself -- store in Clitheroe, but had been there for only two weeks.

Two more were believed to have worked as contractors for Cargo2go, a delivery firm based at Manchester airport, because one of the men was driving the company's van when he was arrested.

A total of 42,292 student visas were issued to Pakistanis between April 2004 and April 2008.