Assassination of Benazir Bhutto - Responsibility

Responsibility

On 27 December, al-Qaeda commander Mustafa Abu al-Yazid is said to have claimed responsibility for the assassination, telling several news outlets that "We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat mujahideen." In his statement to the media, he further claimed that al-Yazid stated that al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri ordered the killing in October 2007. Asia Times Online also reported that it had received a claim of responsibility from al-Yazid by telephone. U.S. intelligence officials have said that they cannot confirm this claim of responsibility. Nonetheless, U.S. analysts have said that al-Qaeda was a likely, or even prime suspect. For its part, the Pakistani Interior Ministry (of the previous Musharraf administration) stated that it had proof that al-Qaeda was behind the assassination, stating "that the suicide bomber belonged to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi – an al Qaeda-linked Sunni Muslim militant group that the government has blamed for hundreds of killings". The Interior Ministry also claimed to have intercepted a statement by militant leader Baitullah Mehsud, said to be linked to al-Qaeda, in which he congratulated his followers for carrying out the assassination. On 29 December a Mehsud spokesman told the Associated Press that Mehsud was not involved in the assassination: "I strongly deny it. Tribal people have their own customs. We don't strike women. It is a conspiracy by government, military and intelligence agencies." The Pakistan Peoples Party also called the government's blame of Mehsud a diversion: "The story that al-Qaida or Baitullah Mehsud did it appears to us to be a planted story, an incorrect story, because they want to divert the attention," said Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Bhutto's party. On 18 January 2008, CIA Director Michael Hayden claimed that Mehsud and his network was responsible.

Bhutto, in a letter to Musharraf written on 16 October 2007, named four persons involved in an alleged plot to kill her: current Intelligence Bureau (IB) Chief Ijaz Shah, former chief minister of Punjab Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, former chief minister of Sindh Arbab Ghulam Rahim, and the former ISI chief, Hamid Gul, as those who posed a threat to her life. British newspaper The Times suggested that elements within the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence with close ties to Islamists might have been behind the killing, though it asserts that Musharraf would have been unlikely to have ordered the assassination. October 2007 emails from Bhutto saying she would blame Musharraf for her death if she were killed, because the Musharraf government was not providing adequate security, were also published after Bhutto's death. Soon after the killing, many of Bhutto's supporters believed that the Musharraf government was involved in the assassination. On 30 December Scotland on Sunday quoted MI5 sources saying that factions of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence may be responsible for the assassination. Bhutto anticipated that three senior allies of President Musharraf were out to kill her in a secret email to Foreign Secretary David Miliband written weeks before her death.