Among those arrested in Pakistan was Rashid Rauf, a British citizen who was detained along the country's border with Afghanistan. His brother, Tayib, was among the people arrested in Britain. A statement from Pakistan's Foreign Ministry described Rashid Rauf as a central figure in the plot and said he had an "Afghanistan-based al-Qaeda connection."
U.S. agents kept the FISA court busy with requests for warrants related to the London plot:
In the days before the alleged airliner bombing plot was exposed, more than 200 FBI agents followed up leads inside the United States looking for potential connections to British and Pakistani suspects. The investigation was so large, officials said, that it brought a significant surge in warrants for searches and surveillance from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret panel that oversees most clandestine surveillance.
One official estimated that scores of secret U.S. warrants were dedicated solely to the London plot....The purpose of the recent warrants included monitoring telephone calls that some of the London suspects made to the United States, two sources said.
The Justice Department sounds like it is itching to get into the legal action over the plotters.
At the Justice Department, prosecutors have debated and identified possible criminal charges that could be filed against those arrested, because they were targeting U.S.-bound flights. One official said they would defer to British prosecutors in the case, but wanted backup options in case their London counterparts encountered problems.
Meanwhile, friends and family of those arrested portray them as "normal guys." And many are skeptical about the investigation:
There is a perception that this is a trial by media," said Jahangir Mohammed, director of the Center for Muslim Affairs, an independent research organization based in Manchester. "The general feeling is that people believe this has been concocted and it is very timely" as a diversion from the war between Israel and the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
Several Muslims said they condemned any terrorist plot but were skeptical about the police investigation and evidence that tied so many seemingly normal, middle-class Muslims to the alleged plot.
Fears of racial profiling abound in the Muslim community:
Khalid Sofi, a senior member of the Muslim Council of Britain, told the BBC....that British police made sweeping arrests of Muslims based on ethnic and religious profiling and used unwarranted stop-and-search procedures, and that most of the Muslims were released without being charged.
British authorities don't deny that some of those arrested will be released:
"Of those we have arrested, some will be released without charge -- that is the nature of an investigation. Some will interpret that as meaning the evidence is not there, but there is a good reason for us to have acted as we have," said Rob Beckley, a senior police officer who heads community and counterterrorism programs for the Association of Chief Police Officers.
