Militant most wanted: Pakistan warlord claims US massacre

FBI rejects the boast of Baitullah Mehsud after 13 die in New York at the hands of a newly unemployed Vietnamese immigrant. But the US already had a $5m bounty on the Taliban chief's head. Stephen Foley reports

The boast was immediately dismissed by police, who formally identified the Binghamton gunman as a recently unemployed Vietnamese immigrant, but intelligence officers believe that Baitullah Mehsud is making a pitch for notoriety as the Obama administration prepares a new assault on the Taliban forces and associated militia who are harbouring al-Qa'ida.

Last month, American forces put a $5m bounty on Mr Mehsud's head, and he in turn promised to launch an attack on the White House and on Washington, which he said would be retaliation for US drone attacks on militants in the Waziristan region of north-western Pakistan. US drones based in Afghanistan are suspected of making more than three dozen raids over the border in the past year, targeting forces that are using Pakistan as a base to attack American and Nato troops. Another suspected drone raid yesterday killed 13 people, according to Pakistani officials. The dead and injured included local and foreign militants, but women and children were also killed.

The drone activity is complicating the fractious relationship between the US and Pakistan, which worries about a violation of its sovereignty but also faces destabilisation by many of the Islamist militant forces operating within its borders.

Mr Mehsud leads the Tehrik-e-Taliban, an alliance of militant groups in Pakistan that is believed to provide sanctuary for al-Qa'ida and to run training camps in the lawless north-western part of the country near the border with Afghanistan.

In what was immediately dismissed as a publicity stunt, Mr Mehsud claimed that two of his men carried out the attack in Binghamton. "Whatever happened in America yesterday was done by our men," he told local journalists in a telephone call from an undisclosed location. "Two of my men, one of whom was Pakistani and the other a foreigner, carried out the operation. One of them carried out a suicide attack and embraced martyrdom, while the other fled the scene."

He gave no evidence to support his boast and contradicted numerous accounts of the incident from witnesses and police officers, but he also repeated threats to launch a suicide attack on Washington "very soon".

Until two years ago, Mr Mehsud was a little-known warlord but his ruthless killing of scores of tribal leaders in the region has helped him to consolidate a significant powerbase. Pakistani officials have implicated him in the 2007 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. His growing international notoriety has inspired Islamist terrorists abroad, and Spanish authorities believe that attacks there were carried out in part in his name.

Although US officers have been dismissive of his claims to be able to strike directly overseas, they are conducting what General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, said this week would be a "deep dive" of all the intelligence information about his Taliban group.

"Any time there is any threat that could be against the homeland, I think you have to take it seriously," he told a Senate panel last week, in response to questioning from the Republican John McCain. "Obviously everyone is riveted on analysing that and seeing what further we can find out about that."

In recent days, Pakistani authorities and US commanders have reportedly collaborated in attempts to root out and kill Mr Mehsud, concerned about his increasingly brazen behaviour and the support he is suspected of giving to Taliban forces inside Afghanistan.

Half a world away, in the shaken town of Binghamton, New York, yesterday, the police chief Joseph Zikuski dismissed Mr Mehsud's claims to be behind the attacks. "I can't say more strongly, there is no tie to any type of terrorism." The historic home of the IBM computer company, a quiet town of 45,000 residents, was focusing instead on planning memorial services for its dead, and what the town's mayor called "a psychological autopsy" on the man whose rampage has added Binghamton to America's grim roll call of towns afflicted by mass shootings.

What can ever be really understood by the rest of about such a man, Mr Zikuski wondered aloud. The bare bones are this. It was 41-year-old Jiverly Wong who jammed a car up against the back wall of the American Civic Centre in downtown Binghamton on a rainy Friday morning, blocking any chance of escape that way for the dozens of immigrants taking English classes inside.

Wearing body armour, he burst in through the front door, saying nothing, but pumping bullets from two handguns first into two receptionists, then more than a dozen people in an adjacent classroom before finally killing himself.

Somewhere in the details of his life are the clues to his murderous rampage. Mr Wong had been in the US for more than 20 years, arriving from Vietnam. His parents and sister were also in the country. He had just lost his job at a store selling vacuum cleaners. Until March, he had been taking English classes at the civic association to which he returned with deadly intent on Friday. He was furious and frustrated about his poor English, Mr Zikuski told reporters, and had been taunted about it.

He sketched a picture of a troubled man whom police had looked into in 1999 after receiving a tip that he was planning a bank robbery and had a cocaine habit. They did not take away the handguns he had been licensed to use earlier in the decade.

Worst of all, Mr Zikuski said, "what we've been told from the people close to him is that this action he took was not a surprise to them."

The town was yesterday hailing the heroism of the receptionist at the centre, who was shot in the stomach and – pretending to be dead – called 911 from under her desk. She stayed on the phone to police for more than hour.

More details were emerging about the horrors inside the centre. Two teachers, Priscilla Pease and Kay Gruss, ran with their 24 students to the basement boiler room after the firing started. They cowered there for three hours while police outside checked whether the gunman was still at large.

"We knew we were safe there, and we knew we had each other," Ms Pease told Binghamton's local paper, adding praise for the police. "We really felt like we were being cared for. We are so grateful that we are saved."

A colleague, Roberta King, 72, who taught at the centre, was the first victim to be identified by relatives who spoke to media yesterday. Four people in hospital with gunshot wounds are all expected to survive.

'Brave boys, the ones who killed her'

The tribal militia leader Baitullah Mehsud's military strength has grown since 9/11. Based in the troubled Waziristan region of Pakistan, he is now believed to control some 20,000 pro-Taliban militants. These are some of the attacks he is believed to have masterminded:

3 April 2009

Mehsud claimed responsibility yesterday for the shootings in Binghamton, New York, which killed 13 people.

30 March 2009

An attack on a Lahore police training academy, which saw eight police personnel, two civilians and eight gunmen killed and 95 people injured, is said by Mehsud to have been masterminded by him. He also claims to have ordered the suicide attack on a military convoy in Bannu on the same day, which killed four security personnel and wounded three others. He said that recent attacks were retaliations for missile strikes from US planes for which Pakistan shared responsibility.

23 March 2009

A suicide attack on a Islamabad Special Branch police station, which killed one policeman, was said to be under Mehsud's direction.

20 September 2008

Mehsud is believed to have been the architect of the bombing of Islamabad's Marriott hotel. The bomb killed at least 54 people and injured more than 260.

18 January 2008 A 10-man terrorist cell that he is understood to have masterminded was seized in Barcelona.

27 December 2007

The assassination of Pakistan's former PM Benazir Bhutto has been attributed to Mehsud, after he vowed revenge on the Pakistani army. The Pakistani government also claimed to have recorded a phone conversation where he says "Fantastic job. Very brave boys, the ones who killed her."

4 September 2007

Suicide bombers attacked a busload of government workers in Rawalpindi, which is estimated to have killed 25 and injured 68 people.

30 August 2007

Mehsud's iron grip on the Waziristan region was proved when he took hostage an entire battalion from a respected regiment of the Pakistani army.

Emily Dugan