Pakistani Teen Arrested In Connection With Bhutto Assassination

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 teen also confessed to taking part in a plot to attack Shiites during Ashoura, even as police in Pakistan's far south said they had foiled suicide attacks planned for the Shiite Muslim festival.

In Karachi, police chief Azhar Farouqi said officers detained five men who were in the possession of explosives, detonators and a small quantity of cyanide intended for attacks on this week's Ashoura processions.

"With these arrests we have foiled major attacks," Farouqi said.

The intelligence official said the 15-year-old told investigators that the five-person squad was dispatched to Rawalpindi, where Bhutto was killed, by Baitullah Mehsud, a militant leader with strong ties to al-Qaida and an alliance with the Taliban in nearby Afghanistan, on Afghanistan's northwest border.

The senior official from Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said the teen was arrested Thursday and was involved in a plot to attack Shiites during an Ashoura festival on Sunday.

Pakistan's Sunni extremists, who regard Shiites as heretics, often attack the community during Ashoura. On Thursday, 11 people died and 20 were injured in a suicide attack on a Shiite mosque in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province.

The Islamists indoctrinate children to take up the cause of jihad, and tribal and familial pressures reinforce the indoctrination so you get instances where children are taught that killing and mass slaughters are acceptable behavior.

Of course, Mehsud's thugs offered up that this is nothing less than government propaganda and that Mehsud's thugs had nothing to do with the assassination. It's always curious how the press is so quick to get feedback from Mehsud and other Taliban thugs. Are they on speed dial?

It also ignores the evidence proffered that suggests that Mehsud's thugs were deeply involved in the assassination. Scotland Yard and the CIA have both pointed at Mehsud's group as being behind the assassination.