Islamabad, Jan 15: The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007, saying it killed her as she allegedly planned to collaborate with the US against the ‘mujahideen’ if she returned to power, says a book by the banned terror group.
“The return of Benazir Bhutto was planned at the behest of the Americans as they had given her a plan against the ‘Mujahideed-e-Islam’. Baitullah had received information of the plan,” the book claimed, in a reference to slain Pakistani Taliban founder Baitullah Mehsud.
The Daily Times reported that no group had claimed responsibility for Bhutto’s murder until the claim in the Taliban’s Urdu-language book titled ‘Inqilab Mehsood South Waziristan — From British Raj to American Imperialism’. Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chief Bhutto, 54, was killed in a suicide attack in Rawalpindi shortly after she had addressed an election rally December 27, 2007.
Former president Pervez Musharraf had blamed the Tehreek- e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) for the attack but the outfit had denied it. The book says suicide bombers Bilal, also known as Saeed, and Ikramullah were tasked to carry out the attack on Bhutto. “Bomber Bilal first fired at Benazir Bhutto from his pistol and the bullet hit her neck. Then he detonated his explosive jacket and blew himself up among the participants of the procession,” the book claimed.
TTP leader Abu Mansoor Asim Mufti Noor Wali has written the book and published it November 30, 2017, at “Maseed Computer Centre in Barmal, in Afghanistan’s Paktika province,” according to details in the book.
The 588-page book, which contains many photographs of Taliban leaders, was posted online. Military sources say most of the TTP fighters, belonging to the Mehsud tribe, had crossed into Afghanistan’s Paktika and Paktia provinces after the military launched a major offensive in 2009.
The book says the TTP was also involved in a suicide bombing two months earlier at Bhutto’s procession in Karachi in October 2007, which had killed nearly 140 people though Bhutto had escaped
unhurt. It revealed that Baitullah Mehsud had approved the Karachi attack on Bhutto’s procession when she returned to Pakistan to lead her party campaign for the 2008
parliamentary elections.
PTI
