DERA ISMAIL KHAN/ MANSEHRA, Jan 21: A boy said to be a would-be suicide bomber, who was arrested in Dera Ismail Khan on Friday for his involvement in the assassination of PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto, told interrogators on Monday that his next target was the US Consulate in Karachi.
Informed sources told Dawn that Aitzaz had confessed during preliminary interrogation that he had been asked to attack Ms Bhutto in Karachi in the event of her escaping the attack in Rawalpindi. But, after Ms Bhutto’s assassination, Aitzaz had been directed to move to Karachi to target the US Consulate, the sources said.
They quoted Aitzaz as saying that he had received terrorist training along with two suspects Bilal and Ikram, whose names had been mentioned in the transcript of a telephone conversation intercepted after the assassination of Ms Bhutto in Rawalpindi on Dec 27.
Police on Monday raided an under-construction house of Sher Zaman, an accomplice of Aitzaz, in the Tariqabad locality of Dera Ismail Khan city and seized explosives and other material used in suicide vests.
Aitzaz and Sher Zaman were taken to Islamabad on Sunday night for further interrogation.
Meanwhile, law-enforcement agencies personnel raided the house of Aitzaz’s uncle Shabbir Hussain Shah in the Battal area of Mansehra and arrested him.
During the interrogation, Shabbir Shah claimed that Aitzaz’s family had been living in Karachi for several years, and he had been missing from his house for one year.
