The U.S. on Sunday said it has evidence that the Pakistani Taliban was behind last week’s failed attempt to detonate a car bomb at Times Square in New York and that Faisal Shahzad was “working at their direction”.
“We’ve now developed evidence that shows that the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attack,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told ABC television’s Sunday current affairs talk show This Week .
“We know that they (Pakistani Taliban) helped facilitate it. We know that they probably helped finance it, and that he (Shahzad) was working at their direction,” he said.
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The 30-year-old Shahzad, a Pakistani who became a naturalised U.S. citizen, was arrested on Monday last for attempting to detonate the car bomb in New York.
The FBI has said that Shahzad, son of a former Pakistani Air Force officer, has admitted to attending a terrorist training camp in Pakistan’s restive Waziristan tribal region.
U.S. officials have been maintaining that Pakistani Taliban could be behind the failed attempt. A video purportedly released by the Pakistani Taliban had claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the outfit rejected it immediately.
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