US charges Pakistani Taliban leader with murder of CIA agents

The US Justice Department filed criminal charges against Hakimullah Mehsud last Wednesday for allegedly organising the suicide attack in December on Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan that killed seven CIA agents and wounded six more. The State Department also confirmed that it had added Mehsud’s Tehrik-e-Taliban to its list of “foreign terrorist organisations”, and is offering rewards of up to $5 million for information about the location of Mehsud and his second-in-command, Wali Ur-Rehman. Two counts filed in a District Court in Washington charge Mehsud with conspiracy to murder US citizens abroad and conspiracy to use a “weapon of mass destruction”—the home-made suicide bomb used by the CIA contact who carried out the attack. The charges carry a sentence of life in prison, but a US official told Reuters that they “are meant to deal with Hakimullah if he’s captured. … He can face justice in other ways too. That hasn’t changed.” In other words, the CIA and US military are still seeking to murder Mehsud using missiles launched from remote-controlled Predator drones.

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