United States officials launched a broad legal offensive against Pakistan’s Taleban yesterday, placing the group on its international terrorism blacklist and charging its leader with planning last year’s suicide bombing in Afghanistan that killed seven CIA employees.
The Pakistani group, known as the Tehrik-e-Taleban or TTP, was officially designated a “foreign terrorist organisation”, a classification that imposes additional state and treasury department sanctions.
The Pakistani Taleban threatens US national security, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a note published in the Federal Register.
The Justice Department then unsealed charges against the self-proclaimed emir of the Pakistani Taleban, Hakimullah Mehsud. He is accused of planning the attack in December in which a suicide bomber detonated explosives at a CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, killing a Jordanian intelligence officer and the CIA employees.
Conviction on the two conspiracy charges, which were entered on August 20, would likely mean life in prison.
“The various actions taken today against the TTP support the US effort to degrade the capabilities of this dangerous group,” State Department counter-terrorism co-ordinator Daniel Benjamin said. “We are determined to eliminate TTP’s ability to execute violent attacks, and to disrupt, dismantle and defeat their networks.”
In addition to the CIA bombing, Pakistan’s Taleban has been blamed for the failed May 1 car bombing in Times Square, New York.
Pakistan accuses the group of being behind the 2007 assassination of former leader Benazir Bhutto and the suicide bombing in April this year against the US consulate in Peshawar that killed six Pakistanis.
The State Department is offering a US$5 million ($7 million) bounty for Mehsud and another top Taleban leader, Wali Ur Rehman, and the Treasury Department has placed financial and travel sanctions on Mehsud and others identified with the group.
The Pakistani Taleban is a loose federation of tribal and regional factions that was initially led by Baitullah Mehsud. It maintains strongholds along the northwestern tribal belt, where the militants are also believed to be providing havens for senior al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden.
Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a CIA missile strike last year and was replaced by his military chief, Hakimullah Mehsud.
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