ISLAMABAD, 19 August 2006 — After only 36 hours’ stay in Islamabad of a six-member British team, seven more people were arrested including the father of bombing plotter-suspect Rashid Rauf, making him the third member of the family in custody, officials said yesterday.

Abdul Rauf, 52, met his son shortly before the arrest in early August of 25-year-old Rashid, who is described by Pakistan as a “key man” in the conspiracy with links to Al-Qaeda.

It was not clear whether Pakistan-born Abdul Rauf, who has lived in Britain for decades, was in custody for questioning over his son’s alleged role in the conspiracy to blow up trans-Atlantic jets or if he was a suspect himself.

Another of Abdul Rauf’s sons, 22-year-old Tayib, is reportedly among two dozen people who were arrested in Britain on Aug. 10 after the alleged plan to blow up planes flying from Britain to the United States was busted.

One intelligence source said Abdul Rauf was picked up by Pakistani intelligence agents from Islamabad international airport soon after the arrest of Rashid earlier this month. “He was taken into custody from the airport when he was leaving the country,” the official told AFP without elaborating.

Pakistan confirmed last week that two Britons were among seven people it had detained in connection with the foiled plot to detonate liquid explosives on planes flying from Britain to the United States.

Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao said he was not aware that Abdul Rauf was in custody. “It is not to my knowledge,” he told AFP.

Abdul Rauf is said to have emigrated from Pakistani Kashmir in the 1960s and reportedly runs a bakery in the English city of Birmingham.

Intelligence officials and friends said Abdul Rauf had traveled to Pakistan in July along with his daughter and a younger son to attend a wedding.

Residents have said he had visited the family’s ancestral village in the Kashmiri hamlet Haveli Begal, where they still have a house, around two weeks ago but had then left.

The officials said Abdul Rauf also met his son a few days before Rashid was apprehended in Bahawalpur, in southern Punjab province. “He went to see his son in Bahawalpur around the 4th of August,” another official said.

Pakistan has said it could extradite Rashid, who fled to Pakistan in 2002 and is wanted for questioning by police in Britain after his uncle was stabbed to death.

While living in Pakistan, Rashid married a woman related to the chief of the banned militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed and had two children. Jaish says Rashid was not a member of the group.

The British High Commission in Islamabad said it was still waiting for Pakistan to respond to a request for details on the arrests of any British nationals in connection with the plots.

British Interior Minister John Reid had telephoned his Paksitani counterpart Sherpao on Thursday evening and “once again personally expressed his thanks to the Pakistani authorities for their continuing assistance in the ongoing counterterror operation,” the High Commission said in a statement.

Pakistan meanwhile has informed US-led coalition forces that an Al-Qaeda kingpin linked to the bomb plot is based in eastern Afghanistan, other security officials said without naming the militant.

“His area of operations is in Kunar,” a volatile Afghan province which borders Pakistan’s northwestern tribal areas, one of the senior officials told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The information on the Al-Qaeda operative, said to be a level below the network’s chief Osama bin Laden and deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, came from the interrogation of Rashid Rauf by Pakistani agents, the officials added.