Teen Admits Role in Squad Sent to Assassinate Bhutto

Jan 20, 08:34 AM

By Slobodan Lekic

The Associated Press

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan

A 15-year-old detained near the Afghan border has confessed to joining a team of assassins sent to kill Benazir Bhutto, officials said Saturday, announcing the first arrests in the case since the attack that killed the opposition leader.

Police also announced they had foiled new suicide attacks against the country's Shiite minority.

Interior Secretary Kamal Shah confirmed the arrest of two people in the town of Dera Ismail Khan in North West Frontier province and said one - a teenage boy - had confessed involvement in the Dec. 27 attack that killed Bhutto. Shah said interrogators were trying to get corroborating testimony from the other detainee before accepting the confession.

In the southern city of Karachi, meanwhile, the police chief said officers detained five men with explosives, detonators and a small quantity of cyanide intended for attacks on this week's Shiite Muslim festival of Ashoura.

"With these arrests we have foiled major attacks," said police chief Azhar Farouqi, adding that the militants might have wanted to put the cyanide into the municipal water supply.

Security officials elsewhere in the country said they had arrested at least 55 other terrorist suspects in a crackdown apparently sparked by a surge in rebel attacks along the restive border with Afghanistan and a spate of bombings targeting Shiites.

In North West Frontier province, a senior intelligence official said the 15-year-old suspect in the Bhutto assassination told investigators a five-person squad was dispatched to Rawalpindi, where Bhutto was killed, by Baitullah Mehsud, a militant leader with ties to al-Qaida and an alliance with the Taliban in nearby Afghanistan.

The official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said the boy was arrested Thursday and also was involved in a plot to attack Shiites during the Ashoura festival to day.

But Maulvi Mohammed Umar, a purported spokesman for Mehsud, dismissed the report.

"It is just government propaganda. ... We have already clarified that we are not involved in the attack on Benazir Bhutto."

The CIA concluded that Mehsud was behind Bhutto's killing shortly after it occurred, an American intelligence official has said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The Musharraf government fingered Mehsud for the former prime minister's death in December, but some members of her political party and her family have questioned those assertions.

Bhutto died when an assassin fired at her and detonated an explosive vest as she was leaving an election campaign rally. The blast killed at least 20 other people and wounded scores more.

a confession

Interior Secretary Kamal Shah confirmed the arrest of two people in the North West Frontier province and said one - a teenage boy - had confessed involvement in the Dec. 27 attack.

(c) 2008 Virginian - Pilot. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved. Teen Admits Role in Squad Sent to Assassinate Bhutto
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