Cheney and Your 3 Ounce Shampoo Bottles
Remember Rashid Rauf? Because of him (and Dick Cheney, as I explain below), you’ve got to either try to squeeze your Tom’s of Maine down into 3 ounce tubes or use crappy sugar-sweet toothpaste when you travel.
Rauf is the Pakistani who was kibbitzing a bunch of British wannabe terrorists without passports, teaching them how to make bombs out of liquids in airplane bathrooms.
The story around Rauf’s arrest (and the subsequent fear-mongering about the purported plot) was always sketchy. As I wrote in 2006, news reports basically said he got arrested, without explaining how or by whom.
Here’s me reading the MSNBC scoop about the US launching the arrests before the Brits were ready:
Americans pushed the Brits to do two things they didn’t want to do. First, they pushed the Brits to arrest Rashid Rauf before they wanted to.
The British official said the Americans also argued over the timing of the arrest of suspected ringleader Rashid Rauf in Pakistan, warning that if he was not taken into custody immediately, the U.S. would "render" him or pressure the Pakistani government to arrest him.
British security was concerned that Rauf be taken into custody "in circumstances where there was due process," according to the official, so that he could be tried in British courts. Ultimately, this official says, Rauf was arrested over the objections of the British.
This passage is actually quite interesting. The US wanted Rauf arrested. The Brits wanted to wait–they wanted to wait until they could arrest Rauf in such a way that he could be tried in the UK. The US threatened to render him. The Brits tried to hold out, so they could prosecute him legally. And then … that’s where the article is less clear. Was Rauf arrested using due process? Will Rauf be a defendant and witness in the UK? Or did the US snatch him, making him useless for a legal prosecution and possibly endangering the larger case in the UK?
So to put Murray and MSNBC together, the US wanted Rauf arrested right away. The Brits wanted to wait so they could use due process. The US threatened to "render" Rauf. The Brits complained.
And then he got arrested.
But by whom, and in what way? As I suggested before, the MSNBC article just drops the whole question, making it clear that the US won that battle, somehow. But it doesn’t explain–was he rendered? Did the US force Pakistan to arrest him? Where is he now? Who has custody?