The alleged Al-Qaeda mastermind of a 2006 transatlantic airplane bombing plot had been on the run for nearly a year before a US missile attack in northwest Pakistan ended his life Saturday.
Pakistani security officials said Rashid Rauf, 26, was among at least five killed when a missile hit a tribesman's house in the village of Alikhel, part of a border district known as a stronghold for Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
When Rauf, a British-Pakistani citizen, was arrested by Pakistan authorities in August 2006, it sparked a worldwide security alert and 24 people were detained in Britain in a major swoop.
The plot to smuggle explosive liquids onto aircraft in soft drinks bottles led to a mass cancellation of flights from London's Heathrow Airport.
It also forced an overhaul of airport security and global restrictions on the liquids that travellers can take on board flights.
Rauf is thought to have been radicalised by an extremist Islamic sect after he fled Britain in 2002.
While in Pakistan he married into the family of Masood Azhar, the chief of the radical Al-Qaeda-linked group Jaish-e-Mohammad.
When later arrested, he told investigators he had met senior Al-Qaeda commanders during frequent trips to tribal districts and across the border in Afghanistan.
The British government asked Pakistan to extradite Rauf, as he was wanted by police in connection with the murder of his uncle Mohammed Saeed, 54, who was stabbed to death in Birmingham, England, in April 2002.
Rauf had been in custody in Pakistan in connection with separate charges under the Security of Pakistan Act — all charges relating to terrorism had been dropped — when he escaped in December 2007 from Pakistani police custody.
He was heading back to jail in Rawalpindi following an extradition hearing in Islamabad when his uncle asked the police escorts if they could all drive there in his more comfortable van rather than in a police vehicle.
The officers agreed and they even stopped at a fast food restaurant where the uncle, Muhammad Rafiq, bought a meal for all four of them. They then allowed Rauf to stop and pray at a mosque, where he was uncuffed and managed to make a break for freedom.
It was reported at the time that the police escorts waited several hours before telling their superiors that Rauf had got away.
The case caused severe embarrassment to the Pakistani government, which ordered a high-level investigation into the suspicious circumstances of the escape. "It is sheer police negligence," said Mohsin Rafiq, superintendent of Adiala jail, at the time.
The escape prompted claims that Rauf had in fact been taken to a secret detention centre by intelligence officials.
"It comes at a time when the British government is trying to extradite him," Rauf's lawyer Hashmat Habib said of the escape. "And it all looks very suspicious to me."
The plot involving Rauf allegedly targeted seven flights from Heathrow — to New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto and Montreal — operated by United Airlines, American Airlines and Air Canada.
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