Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, a Pakistani Interior Ministry spokesman said Friday.A report by the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan quoted ministry spokesman Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema as saying, "Al Qaeda in a statement has accepted the responsibility of her assassination, as in the past she had been receiving life threats from this terrorist group."
CNN could not independently confirm that al Qaeda has claimed responsibility.
On Thursday, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin citing an alleged claim of responsibility by the terror network for Bhutto's death, a DHS official said.
But FBI and other law enforcement officials said that the claim is unsubstantiated and that federal officials are not making any comments about its validity.
No one has accepted responsibility for the Pakistani opposition leader's death on radical Islamist Web sites that regularly post such messages from al Qaeda and other militant groups.
Bhutto, 54, was killed Thursday in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, by flying shrapnel stemming from a suicide bombing, the Pakistani government said. See photos from rally and aftermath »
Italian news agency Adnkronos International apparently was the source of the al Qaeda claim, saying the terror network's Afghan commander and spokesman Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid had telephoned the agency with it.
"We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahedeen," the Italian news agency quoted Al-Yazid as saying.
The agency said that al Qaeda's No. 2 official, Ayman al-Zawahiri, set the wheels in motion for Bhutto's assassination in October.
One Islamist Web site repeated the assertion, but experts in the field don't consider the site to be a reliable source for Islamist messages.
The DHS official said the claim was "an unconfirmed open source claim of responsibility" and the bulletin was sent out at about 6 p.m. Thursday to state and local law enforcement agencies. Watch as an analyst says the killing gives al Qaeda "running room" »
The official characterized the bulletin as "information sharing."
FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said the validity of such a claim is "undetermined." Kolko said the FBI and the intelligence community is reviewing it "for any intelligence value."
Ross Feinstein, spokesman for Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, said the U.S. intelligence community is monitoring the situation and trying to figure out who is responsible for the assassination.
"We are not in a position to confirm who may be responsible," Feinstein said.
Bhutto had been critical of what she believed was a lack of effort by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's government to protect her.
About a week after an October 18 car-bomb attack on her motorcade in Karachi, Pakistan, Bhutto sent an an e-mail to Mark Siegel, her U.S. spokesman, lobbyist and longtime friend.
Siegel forwarded the message to CNN's Wolf Blitzer with instructions not to report on it unless Bhutto was killed.
In the e-mail, Bhutto said Musharraf should bear some of the blame if anything were to happen to her.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/12/28/bhutto.dhs.alqaeda/index.html
JPTF 2007/12/28
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