DHS monitoring al Qaeda confession in Bhutto case

CNN:

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin Thursday citing an alleged claim of responsibility by al Qaeda for former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's assassination, a DHS official told CNN.

But such a claim has not appeared on radical Islamist Web sites that regularly post such messages from al Qaeda and other militant groups.

The source of the claim was apparently Italian news agency, Adnkronos International (AKI), which said that al Qaeda Afghanistan commander and spokesman Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid had telephoned the agency to make the claim.

"We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen," AKI quoted Al-Yazid as saying.

According to AKI, al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri set the wheels in motion for the assassination in October.

One Islamist Web site repeated the claim, but that Web site is not considered a reliable source for Islamist messages by experts in the field.

The DHS official said the claim was "an unconfirmed open source claim of responsibility" and the bulletin was sent out at about 6 p.m. to state and local law enforcement agencies.

The official characterized the bulletin as "information sharing."

...

DHS is still monitoring the various claims. They are also probably aware of the threats made by the Islamist religious bigots before the murder. Al Qaeda is a virulent opponent of democracy, viewing it as a Greek infidel construct that is anti Islamic. They are more into the "divine right" school of government. Naturally they view themselves as the possessors of that right pretty much exclusively.