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Tuesday August 15, 10:27 PMPakistan says no request from Britain to hand over bomb suspect(Kyodo) _ The Pakistani Foreign Ministry on Tuesday said it had received no request from Britain to hand over the British national arrested last week in connection with a plot to blow up transatlantic airliners.Ministry spokeswoman Tasneem Aslam told a weekly briefing that Pakistan did not have an extradition treaty with Britain and therefore had not received any request for the extradition of Rashid Rauf, a British citizen of Pakistani origin. However, both Pakistan and Britain were cooperating in the U.S.-led war on terrorism under which the two countries were providing mutual legal assistance in a joint working group, she said. Aslam said that after Rauf was arrested, the British government asked for mutual legal assistance under which two countries help each other in investigations and share the results of the interrogation. "Mutual legal assistance would continue," she said. The spokeswoman rejected reports of the involvement of any Pakistan-based militant group in the plot to blow up airliners traveling from Britain to the United States. "This was an al-Qaida operation, al-Qaida is based in Afghanistan. I am not in a position to say any more without compromising our investigations. So I will stop at that," she said. Aslam said that Rauf was arrested from "somewhere in Punjab." She said that information provided by Rauf led to several arrests in Pakistan and 23 arrests of British nationals of Asian origin in Britain. According to local media reports, Rauf was arrested in Bahawalpur in southern Pakistan, which is a stronghold of the anti-India guerrilla group Jaish-e-Mohammad. Aslam also discounted reports that relief funds sent from Britain in the wake of last October's South Asian earthquake that devastated northern Pakistan were linked to the plot. Asked what charges have been brought against Rauf, the spokeswoman said, "The same charges under which 23 people were detained in the United Kingdom." The spokeswoman also took exception to media reports describing Pakistan as the epicenter of terrorism, pointing out that Pakistan was at the frontline of fighting terrorism and that the al-Qaida terror network was created by Western countries that brought thousands of foreigners to Pakistan to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. "Those who are making these statements have either short memories or suffer from amnesia," she said. |
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