al Qaeda Linked to Assassination of Benazir Bhutto

A militant group with close ties to al Qaeda has been linked to the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. According to the Pakistani government, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni Muslim extremist organization, was responsible to the killing of the 54-year-old Bhutto along with 20 others in Thursday’s attack.

While the group has not claimed responsibility for the killings, a state run news agency in Pakistan said they were told by the country’s Interior Ministry spokesman Brig, Javed Iqbal Cheema that “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.”

An Italian news agency, Adnkronos International, went on to say that the murder of Bhutto had been planned by al- Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri since October.

The bomber linked to the assassination was connected to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a group that had been outlawed by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf sine 2001. It is the same group that attempted to assassinate former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999.

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