Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud paid out more than $7,000, including money to purchase suicide jackets, for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the chief Pakistani investigator said Sunday. Four suspects in custody said Mehsud also planned the December 27 attack, Chaudhry Abdul Majeed told reporters. Mehsud, who has ties to al Qaeda, remains at large. Majeed said two of the four men in custody last week confessed before a Pakistani judge that they had participated in the plot. Many others who helped plan the attack "have yet to be arrested," Majeed said.A day after Bhutto's death, Pakistan's government announced that Mehsud was behind the attack. The CIA later reached the same conclusion. But two recent nationwide polls in Pakistan found a majority of Pakistanis believe President Pervez Musharraf's government had a role in her killing. Majeed said Sunday that he announced the details about Mehsud's connection to the attack because Pakistan could formally charge him at a later date.
Two of the suspects told a judge on Wednesday that they provided the suicide bomber with a house, transportation, a pistol and the suicide jacket he allegedly used in the attack that killed the opposition leader and nearly two dozen others, Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said. Both were at the Rawalpindi park when Bhutto was assassinated, according to Majeed. He said the bomber was motivated to carry out the attack because his friend was killed after Pakistani security forces stormed the Red Mosque in Islamabad last year to rout Islamic extremists holed up inside.