Pakistan's Taliban says did not train NY bomb suspect

Pakistan's Taliban earlier said it neither trained nor recruited the alleged New York bomb plotter, further confusing inquiries into possible links between the suspect and militant cells.

Pakistani and U.S. investigators are trying to piece together how and why the son of an affluent family could have turned his back on the prospect of a comfortable life in the United States to plot mass murder.

The main spokesman for Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which purportedly claimed the attack in a video but which has been described as increasingly fragmented, said the faction neither recruited nor trained Shahzad.

"We don't even know him. We did not train him," Azam Tariq told two AFP reporters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

"He may be trained by any other militant group," the spokesman added.

According to the U.S. criminal complaint, Shahzad admitted to receiving bomb-making training in Waziristan, a fortress of Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked militants with increasingly overlapping associations and ideology.

The New York Times said there were strong indications that Shahzad knew some members of the Taliban and that they probably had a role in training him.

But one theory touted by analysts is that Shahzad may have received limited training, but not been a full member of a militant faction.

One security official said the type of explosives planted in the Nissan SUV that Shahzad allegedly drove had Pakistani Taliban-style signatures, but that it was premature to say who he met and how he may have done it.
Al Arabiya