Taliban head charged with planning CIA bombing

WASHINGTON – U.S. officials launched a broad legal offensive against Pakistan’s Taliban on Wednesday, 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-Taliban or TTP, was officially designated a “foreign terrorist organization,” a classification that imposes additional State and Treasury department sanctions. The Pakistani Taliban threatens U.S. national security, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a note published in the Federal Register.

The Justice Department then unsealed charges against the self-proclaimed emir of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud. He is accused of planning the December 2009 attack 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 Aug. 20, would likely mean life in prison.

In addition to the CIA bombing, Pakistan’s Taliban has been blamed for the failed May 1 car bombing in New York’s Times Square. Pakistan’s government accuses the group of being behind the 2007 assassination of Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto and the April 2010 suicide bombing against the U.S. consulate in Peshawar that killed six Pakistanis.

“These charges are part of a multipronged U.S. government effort to disrupt and dismantle Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan,” Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said. “It is our intention to hold Mehsud accountable for his actions and we will work with our partners in the intelligence community, the military and law enforcement, as well as our counterparts overseas, to achieve that objective.”

The State Department is offering a $5 million bounty for Mehsud and another top Taliban leader, Wali Ur Rehman, and the Treasury Department has placed financial and travel sanctions on Mehsud and others identified with the group.

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or Pakistani Taliban Movement, is a loose federation of tribal and regional factions 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-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden.

Baitullah Mehsud was killed in an Aug. 5, 2009, CIA missile strike in northwestern Pakistan. He was replaced by his military chief, Hakimullah Mehsud.