Liquid Bomb Plot - 2 Released So Far, No Charges

British police have today released without charge another of those arrested as suspects in the "liquid bomb plot". Another suspect had been released without charge on Tuesday. The police have applied for and been granted an extra seven days to question 21 suspects, and an extra five days to question two.

These actions are likely to further fuel scepticism in the UK over the plot, with a broad range from left to right expressing doubts that the plot had been as far advanced as originally touted by the government and its allies in the Bush administration. However, the BBC is saying that:

officers have discovered "items of interest" during their search of a piece of woodland called King's Wood in High Wycombe. It is thought they were looking for explosive detonators about the size of cigarettes.

Which stops short of saying that actual explosives and detonators have been found - no official statement has mentioned the seizure of explosives, detonators or precursor chemicals - but suggests that the plot may not be entirely fictitious like the recent Forest Gate fiasco.

Further scepticism will doubtless be created by Pakistani security sources yesterday claiming that those arrested were connected to Al Qaida via that organisation's reputed "number three" - Abu Faraj al-Libbi.

to intervene earlier by US and Pakistani authorities.

British detectives are in Islamabad working with the Pakistani security services with regard to Rashid Rauf, the Briton held in connection with the alleged plot. No decision has been made as to whether he will be extradited to Britain.

Abu Faraj al-Libbi, who after Osama bin Laden and the Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahiri, is suspected of being al-Qaida's third in command, has been named by Pakistani security sources as the main planner of the alleged plot, according to Dawn, a daily newspaper. He has also been accused of being in a plot to assassinate Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, and was arrested last year and turned over to the US.

A security official said: "There was a mastermind, there was a planner, and there were the executioners."

A mastermind who has been in US custody since May of last year may well be a stretch too far - especially since it is still far from clear that he was ever, in fact, a mastermind for Al Qaida at all. Many now believe that Rashid Rauf has been tortured while in Pakistani custody and such statements will reinforce the notion that while under torture he is admitting to whatever his interogators wish him to. The Pakistani regime certainly has plenty of motive to wish al-Libbi implicated in further terrorist activities - since the strongest case against him has always been involvement in the assasination plot against Pakistan's dictator and since events like the Mumbai bombings called into question that regime's determination to fight terrorism.