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Teenager held in Benazir death?

ISLAMABAD: A teenaged boy has been arrested in the North West Frontier Province town of Dera Ismail Khan for his alleged involvement in the assassination of the former Prime Minister and Pakistan people’s Party leader, Benazir Bhutto, according to unconfirmed reports.

The 15-year-old Aitezaz Shah was reportedly arrested earlier this week, and is said to have admitted that he was part of a five-man assassination team dispatched by the Pakistani Al-Qaeda-linked Taliban warlord Beithullah Mehsud to kill Benazir. The Interior Ministry has not confirmed the arrest and a spokesman told reporters there was no new development in the case. But several Pakistani television channels and the Al-Jazeera television quoted unnamed security officials claiming the arrest.

Al-Jazeera said the boy named two others in the team as Bilal and Akram. He reportedly said it was Bilal who shot Benazir and then blew himself up. Had he or Akram failed, the others were to carry out the operation.

It is not clear if he said anything about the whereabouts of Akram if he is still alive, or the other two unnamed members of the group.

The boy’s reported version backs the government’s claim that the trail of the killing leads back to the Waziristan-based Mehsud.

In the days after the killing, the government released a tape-recorded conversation between Mehsud congratulating another militant on the assassination. The militant tells Mehsud that the men who carried it out “were ours” and identified them as Ikramullah and Bilal. He said a third person called Saeed was also in the team.

Mesud has since denied that he had anything to do with the assassination, but on Friday, the government’s claim was strongly backed by the CIA’s first public assessment of the killing.

In an interview published in the Washington Post, CIA Director Michael V Hayden said Benazir was killed by militants loyal to Mehsud and supported by the Al-Qaeda network.

Mehsud is a powerful warlord in South Waziristan, and the last few days have seen several clashes between his fighters and the security forces.

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