"Al Qaeda's no. 3" mastermind behind UK jet plot

Pakistan's Dawn newspaper is reporting today that a senior Al-Qaeda leader known only as "Al Qaeda's No. 3" was the mastermind behind the foiled plot to blow up 10 USA bound jets.

"Al-Qaeda’s No. 3" was the mastermind behind the plot to blow up transatlantic flights, an intelligence source said, here on Tuesday. "It is not Osama bin Laden and it’s not Aiman Al Zawahiri, but someone close to the rank of Abu Faraj Al-Libbi," the source said.

It is an Afghanistan-based Al Qaeda connection, the source said requesting he not be named. "It is the top hierarchy," he said.

Abu Faraj Al-Libbi, a third-tier Al Qaeda operative was believed involved in an attempt to assassinate President Gen Pervez Musharraf and was arrested from Mardan in May 2005. Seventeen people had died in the attempt in Rawalpindi in December 2005.

The intelligence soured said the plot to blow up US-bound planes was similar in pattern to the one hatched to kill President Musharraf. "There was a mastermind, there was a planner and there were the executioners."

That planner would be the recently arrested Rashid Rauf.

The New York Times has a similar story, with a second writer added to the byline. That story, like Dawn's, does not name "Al-Qaeda's No. 3."

Technorati tags: Pakistan Al Qaeda War on Terror Heathrow UK Terrorism Rashid Rauf