Pak jail break: Terrorist had access to mobile phone,Facebook

Security officials have told the media that the Pakistani Taliban carried out the attack primarily to free Rashid,who was sentenced to death by a military court for the attempt on the life of Musharraf in 2003.

Rashid had used mobile phones inside death row cells of different jails where he was held after his conviction,the Dawn newspaper quoted its sources as saying today.

A former junior technician of the Pakistan Air Force,Rashid also contributed to several social networking sites like Facebook and to blogs from inside prison,the report said.

He was in contact with persons outside the prison,including several journalists,through his mobile phone and even sent SMSes to the reporters,the report said.

A total of 384 prisoners,including 21 who were on death row,escaped when hundreds of Taliban fighters stormed the jail in Bannu before dawn yesterday.

The attackers focussed on the barrack where the death row prisoners were being held,officials said.

A resident of Chota Lahor area of Swabi district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa,Rashid is fluent in English,Pashto and Urdu.

He joined the PAF in 1997 and was around 24 when he was arrested in early 2004.

Interviews of Rashid,conducted when he was in prison,were uploaded on Facebook.

In these interviews,he argued against what he described as flaws in the Army Act,Pakistan Air Force Act and Navy Act and urged the Supreme Court to intervene in such cases.

He sent several letters to the Supreme Court Chief Justice,requesting him to look into flaws in cases.

In one letter to the Chief Justice,Rashid claimed that at the time of the assassination attempt,he was on duty in Quetta and was picked up by intelligence personnel on January 9,2004.

When Rashid was transferred to a civil detention facility,he was initially held in a death row cell at Haripur prison,from where he was shifted to Peshawar jail.

In September last year,he was shifted to the jail in Bannu.

A reporter who had received messages from Rashid said that in almost all the prisons,Rashid had access to cellular phones.

Rashid had to change his number several times as he was deprived of his phone during search operations in the prisons.

Rashid had continued to plead his innocence and claimed that his only crime was that he had voted “No” in the referendum held by Musharraf during his regime.

He had pinned “high hopes” on the judiciary led by Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry in connection with a review petition he had filed along with several other convicts.

After his petition was dismissed in March 2011,Rashid started questioning the independence of the judiciary,the report said.