There is an update in the "investigation" into the Benazir Bhutto assasination plot.
A teenager who said he was part of a team of assassins sent to kill former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was arrested near the Afghan border, Pakistani officials said Saturday.
The unnamed teenager confessed to his part in the assasination after being caught, along with 4 others, with explosives, detonators and cyanide, supposedly meant to be used in a foiled attack on Shiites Muslims.
This 15 year old mastermind was sent on the Bhutto mission by Baitullah Mehsud, a militant leader with al-Qaida and Taliban ties. According to Azhar Farouqi, the Karachi police chief
With these arrests we have foiled major attacks.
Great, right? One plot stopped and another solved. There's just one problem.
Maulvi Mohammed Umar, a purported spokesman for Mehsud, denied his group had links with the teen, and said he had not been dispatched by Mehsud to kill Bhutto.
In most cases, everyone would expect a group to make a denial, whether they had a part in the plot or not. Problem is, most of these al-Qaida groups not only accept responsibility for their actions, they brag about any action they take, particularly something of this scale. Mehsud is far from shy about claiming responsibility for his group's actions. Just this last week, his fighters took over two Pakistani forts and made sure everyone know who had tweaked the lion's tail.
Don't get me wrong, I love a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone. Without conspiracies, NRA members wouldn't have anything to talk about during their Saturday night pot-luck dinners. But this one seems to be a bit of a stretch. It would be very easy to pluck some 15 year old village kid, without much knowledge of anything beyond his tribal border, and beat a confession out of him.
As usual, the Bush Government can't help but stick their nose in.
In Washington, U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Mehsud, who heads a network of armed groups in the lawless region along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, organized the attack on Bhutto as part of a campaign of assassinations of Pakistani officials and suicide bombings in the country.
Putting the blame on Mehsud, who is an enemy and a danger to security, does cover all bases of the Bhutto assasination. Except, of course, the part where she was put in an overcrowded, underguarded area, where the police had abandoned their posts. And the part where she was a threat to the US-propped government. And the fact that, since al-Qaida are very strict in their observations of the tenets of Islam, they would never attack a woman.
But if you ignore those parts, it all fits.
coyotemike has never been to the grassy knoll, but has heard it's nice.
Pardon me for being sceptical, but do 15-year-old boys usually have a lot of credibility as terrorist organisers? I don't know a great deal about Pakistan's tribes, but patriarchies tend to respect age, and violent people tend to respect the capacity for violence. Am I missing something here?
SockPuppet said:
Pardon me for being sceptical, but do 15-year-old boys usually have a lot of credibility as terrorist organisers? I don't know a great deal about Pakistan's tribes, but patriarchies tend to respect age, and violent people tend to respect the capacity for violence. Am I missing something here?
I'm sure there are plenty of 15 year olds in the various organizations, but I seriuosly doubt they have much to do with high-priority operations like political assasinations. They seem to fall more under the category of "cannon fodder."
Coyotemike
USA
May 2006
JAN 19, 2008 10:27 AM