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CIA pins Bhutto's murder on leader linked to Taliban

In Washington, the CIA concluded that a Pakistani tribal leader's network was behind the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, a US intelligence official said, while Pakistani authorities said they arrested a teen allegedly linked to the plot.

The tribal leader, Baitullah Mehsud, is an extremist with strong ties to al-Qaeda and an alliance with the Taliban. He heads up a network in South Waziristan, a lawless border region abutting Afghanistan. He has been blamed for an organized campaign of assassinations of Pakistani officials and suicide bombings across the country.

The CIA concluded that Mehsud was behind the Dec. 27 killing of Bhutto shortly after it occurred, according to an intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The Washington Post first reported the CIA's conclusion on Friday in an interview with CIA director Michael Hayden.

"This was done by that network around Baitullah Mehsud. We have no reason to question that," Hayden told the newspaper.

The intelligence official said Mehsud, believed to be in his early 30s, is a "committed jihadist" who recruits and trains suicide operatives for the Taliban and al-Qaeda. His network carries out suicide attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan, primarily along the border. The attacks have stretched from Nuristan Province in northeast Afghanistan to Helmand Province in the south, he said.

Mehsud's men kidnapped nearly 250 Pakistani soldiers in August and held them until November, when he negotiated the release of two dozen jailed tribesmen, a group that included extremists and would-be suicide bombers.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has blamed Mehsud's movement, Tehrik-e-Taliban, for 19 suicide attacks that have killed more than 450 people over the last three months.

Mehsud, whose tribe of the same name is the most violent in South Waziristan Province, signed a peace pact with Pakistan's army in February 2005.

In it, he promised to deny shelter to foreign al-Qaeda fighters in exchange for an end to military operations in the region and compensation for tribesmen killed by the military.

"It was a disaster for the US. The bad guys had more operational freedom," said Representative Mike Rogers, the senior Republican on the House Intelligence subcommittee on terrorism.

Al-Qaeda has since then re-established its headquarters in the sanctuary of the tribal area and suicide bombers and Taliban fighters are believed to cross into Afghanistan regularly to attack civilians and US and Afghan forces.

Meanwhile, Pakistani police arrested 15-year-old Aitezaz Shah, who told investigators he had been part of a five-man squad deployed to kill Bhutto, a senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.

In Islamabad, however, a government spokesman said he could not confirm the official's claim.

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