A suspect in a failed al-Qaeda bid to blow a US-bound airliner, has escaped from where he was kept in custody, a senior official said on Sunday. Rashid Rauf, of Pakistani-British origin, escaped on Saturday, from outside an Islamabad court where police had escorted him for an extradition hearing.

“We are trying our best to re-arrest him,” said Interior Ministry spokesman, Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, more than 20 hours after Rauf’s disappearance. Cheema gave no details on how Rauf escaped but he said a “high-powered” inquiry team of police and Interior Ministry officials had been set up to investigate the matter and to find out “who is to blame”.

Rauf’s lawyer said his client’s flight was a mystery. “What made him do that when there was no major case against him and secondly, how did he manage this as 10 or 12 armed policemen were guarding him?” lawyer Hasmat Habib told Reuters.

Arrested in Pakistan in August 2006, Rauf was identified by Pakistani officials as a key figure in a plot to blow up airliner travelling from London to the United States. But his case ran into a legal quagmire and was being handled by higher and lower courts simultaneously.

An anti-terrorism court dropped terrorism charges against him, citing lack of evidence, and referred lesser charges, including the possession of explosives, to the civil court. But a high court in Lahore, acting on a plea from the government, suspended the trial and had the case referred back to the anti-terrorism court.

Rauf had left Britain for Pakistan in 2002 after the murder of an uncle in Britain. Britain sought his extradition in connection with the murder, and Pakistan agreed to consider the request. “We are urgently seeking clarification on what happened,” said Laura Davies, a spokeswoman for the British High Commission in Islamabad.