A Pakistani catering executive, whose top-end firm attracted a US terror warning, may have met the chief suspect in the New York bomb plot but had no relations with him, his father said Saturday. Salman Ashraf Khan, the vice president of his father's Hanif Rajput Catering Services, went missing in Islamabad on May 10 and the family suspect he has been detained by either Pakistani or US intelligence agents.
"It is now beyond any doubt," his father, Rana Ashraf Khan, told AFP when asked if his son had been picked up. Khan said Salman had no terror links but could not rule out that he may have met Faisal Shahzad. "My son used to visit different places personally to oversee arrangements for functions and he might have met him somewhere. It has been made an issue unnecessarily," he told AFP.
Asked whether Salman had any relations with Shahzad, who has been charged with five counts of terrorism in the United States, his father replied: "This is absolutely baseless. There is nothing of the sort". "We (the family) are all "suffering from mental trauma," he said. Salman joined the family business in 2001, after completing his education in Houston, Texas, according to the company website.
Fahim Khan, the firm's sales manager, told AFP that Salman went missing on May 10 and that the family intended to petition the Supreme Court, which takes on cases of people who have disappeared, believed detained in Pakistan. "He left home at 11 am and was picked up on his way to the office," said Fahim Khan, who is a cousin of Salman.
"We don't know if Pakistani or US agencies are involved. No one has contacted us so far from the Pakistani authorities," Fahim Khan said. "They should tell us the charges, they should hold an open trial," he said. Business has been badly affected, with at least 10 functions cancelled in recent days, he added.
The US embassy in Pakistan issued a threat notice to its citizens and staff on Friday, warning that "terrorist groups may have established links to the Hanif Rajput Catering Service," in a warden's notice posted on its website. Pakistani security officials told AFP only that various people had been detained as part of an investigation into Shahzad and the botched May 1 bomb attempt in Times Square, but refused to give details.
Shahzad allegedly told interrogators that he visited Waziristan, part of Pakistan's tribal belt along the Afghan border, for bomb-making training, but it remains unclear if and when he went, and how he may have been funded.
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