Back Channels on "B's" assassination

Back channels indicate there were many other attacks on others same day as assassination.

Also it was a combined attack on "B"
and rogue elements involved.

Pakti press still locked down.
Great Britan has an unusually large interest in this story. 20% of surfers/ normally 5%.
UPDATE: Yesterday the British followers of exiled cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed issued a statement celebrating the murder of Benazir Bhutto. The announcement was reposted under the title Death of Bhutto: A day of joy: from Jawa Report
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Baitullah Mehsud the NEW TALIBAN LEADER for a while now and FBI has no reward for him.
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The attack yesterday at Rawalpindi bore the hallmarks of a sophisticated military operation. At first, Bhutto's rally was hit by a suicide bomb that turned out to be a decoy. According to press reports and a situation report of the incident relayed to The New York Sun by an American intelligence officer, Bhutto's armored limousine was shot by multiple snipers whose armor-piercing bullets penetrated the vehicle, hitting the former premier five times in the head, chest, and neck. Two of the snipers then detonated themselves shortly after the shooting, according to the situation report, while being pursued by local police. A separate attack was thwarted at the local hospital where Bhutto possibly would have been revived had she survived the initial shooting. . . . A working theory, according to this American source, is that Al Qaeda or affiliated jihadist groups had effectively suborned at least one unit of Pakistan's Special Services Group, the country's equivalent of Britain's elite SAS commandos. . . . "They just killed the most protected politician in the whole country," this source said. "We really don't know a lot at this point, but the first thing that is happening is we are asking the Pakistani military to account for every black team with special operations capabilities."

Lake's source stressed to him that "this was just a theory at this point"
SOURCE:

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We don't yet know whether Al- Qaeda Commander and spokesman Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told the truth in his phone call to Italian news agency Adnkronos International (AKI) when he stated that the decision to kill Bhutto was made by Al- Qaeda No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri in October, 2007, and carried out by a cell involving a "Punjabi volunteer" of Lashkar-i-Jhangvi ("LIJ").

But the involvement of LIJ fits the past pattern of its terrorist activities, which link up with Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and which are profoundly committed to destroying secular rule in Pakistan.

As summarized by the US Department of State, LIJ is a Sunni-Deobandi Muslim extremist group, based mostly in the Punjab region of Pakistan and Karachi. It has assisted in several high-profile attacks on Westerners in Pakistan, including the January 2002 kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. In 2002, LIJ banded with two other Sunni extremist groups to form the Pakistani wing of al Qaeda. Their goal? Ending secular rule and replacing it with a Sunni Muslim state.

LIJ has implemented this goal through a series of lethal attacks on sectarian rivals, including the types of people who have the greatest symbolic value as victims of terrorism. They thus have murdered priests, diplomats, religious leaders, and people while they are actually engaged in worship. Notably, LIJ claimed responsibility for attempting to assassinate Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999.

LIJ is reportedly a very small organization, with perhaps as few as 100 members. Even if it were not responsible for Bhutto's assassination, it had already exercised a disproportionately destructive impact on Pakistan, the region, and the world. And all in the name of destroying secularism, and replacing it with a Taliban-like theocracy.
SOURCE:

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In northwest Pakistan a suicide bomber detonated his bomb inside a crowded mosque on Eid al-Adha (the Islamic Feast of Sacrifice which marks the end of the annual hajj.) The attack was an attempt to kill former Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao. Forty-eight people were killed and over 100 were wounded, including Sherpao's son and two grandnephews. Sherpao was unharmed.

This was the second attempt on Sherpao’s life in eight months, the previous attempt at a political rally in nearby Charsadda, 28 were killed and Sherpao was slightly wounded.

That Islamists would attack Sherpao is unsurprising. As Interior Minister he was a top security official and a key player in the Lal Masjid Mosque crackdown that has sparked the present high levels of violence. But for an Islamist to enter a mosque on a major holiday and murder innocent worshipers should be beyond the pale - even for radical Islamists.

Read the complete post here.

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It should be noted that is not the first time that Al-Qaida and its affiliates have allegedly targeted Benazir Bhutto for assassination. During the Philippine police interrogation of Abdul Hakim Murad--an associate of 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef--Murad recalled that Yousef "once made a statement that BHUTTO should be replaced as PM of Pakistan since Islamic belief does not allow a woman to occupy such position and that [mujahideen organizations] should do something to unseat her. Said statement indicates that [Yousef] might be planning to carry out an attack against the PM of Pakistan." Likewise, during the mid-1990s, the FBI recorded several telephone conversations involving Kifah Jayyousi and Adham Hassoun (who were recently convicted in federal court for their role in recruiting would-be Al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla) in which the men discussed "getting rid" of the late Pakistani Prime Minister--who they referred to as "Khanazir Bhutto" ("Bhutto the Pig"): "She's done... done... she... she was finished... finished, my brother... I was reading about the life... the life of the Prophet, peace and blessing upon him... 'Men are ruined if they are to obey women'. Praise to God."
SOURCE:

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Bhutto’s death also makes former prime minister Nawaz Sharif Pakistan’s top opposition figure. Sharif has attempted to appeal to Islamic militants, arguing that Pakistan needs to pare down its cooperation with the United States. Sharif has already capitalized on Bhutto’s death, visiting the hospital where she was declared dead, blasting Musharraf for providing Bhutto with insufficient security, and calling for a reunification of Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party and his own Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz.

Bhutto’s assassination once again spotlights the need for the U.S. to formulate a feasible Pakistan policy, something I have called for previously.
You can read the entire symposium -- which includes contributions from Bill Roggio, Jonathan Foreman, and Mansoor Ijaz, among others -- here. For more on our policy options in Pakistan, see the cover story that I wrote for the Weekly Standard back in October, "While Pakistan Burns."

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Baitullah Mehsud: Backgrounder

Our threads HERE:

Gerald


A Pakistan Govt news conference has confirmed that Benazir Bhutto was not killed from the bullet of the suicide bomber.
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What "B" wanted to do: and binny dead? at 6:11
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December 28: The "Pakistani government has changed the story on how Bhutto was killed three times, but evidence suggests she was shot.


Automated feed switched to Bhutto ( Right column only )

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