A pious, quiet, gentle-natured former baker's boy who was keen on football - hardly the stereotypical characteristics of the most-wanted terror suspect in Britain. But Rashid Rauf, 27, a Briton of Kashmiri origin, was a suspected al-Qaeda planner considered to be the main player behind an alleged plot to blow up airliners flying from Heathrow to America.

Rauf and his family moved to live in Birmingham when he was one year old. After leaving school, he delivered bread for his family's bakery. In 2002 he was suspected of being involved in the murder of his uncle, who was stabbed near his home in Birmingham, and fled to Pakistan. He joined a madrassa in Bahawalpur, where he met his future wife. She was a relative of Maulana Masood Azhar, leader of Jaish e-Mohammed, an outlawed militant group with connections to al-Qaeda. Rauf reportedly joined the group soon after his arrival in Pakistan.

The association allegedly brought him in contact with al-Qaeda, and later he was arrested at the bidding of the US in August 2006, taken at gunpoint from a bus in Bhawalpur, Pakistan, the day before 24 terror suspects were arrested in Britain in connection with the alleged plot.

He escaped from police custody in Pakistan in 2007, an operation that was believed to have been organised by Jaish e-Mohammed.

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