“I strongly deny it. Tribal people have their own customs. We don’t strike women,” Mehsud’s spokesman Maulvi Omar said by telephone from an undisclosed location. The government said on Friday that Mehsud was responsible for Bhutto’s killing as she left an election rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, close to Islamabad, on Thursday. Al Qaeda is actively trying to destabilise Pakistan, and there have been several assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf, his former prime minister Shaukat Aziz and former interior minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao.

But the militant’s spokesman said Bhutto was a victim of President Pervez Musharraf’s security apparatus, repeating a conspiracy theory many Pakistanis are willing to believe. “This was a well-planned conspiracy carried out by the intelligence agencies, army and government for their own political motives,” said Omar, the official spokesman for the Taliban in Pakistan, adding his condemnation of the killing of Bhutto. Mehsud is one of Pakistan’s most wanted militant leaders and is based in the South Waziristan tribal region on the Afghan border, known as a major sanctuary for al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The notion of a woman leading the Islamic nation was also abhorrent to ultra conservative Muslims who subscribe to al-Qaeda’s world view.

An interior ministry spokesman yesterday said authorities had intercepted a conversation between Mehsud and an unknown cleric exchanging greetings on the assassination. An Urdu translation of the conversation, in the Pashto language, was also distributed. “It was a tremendous effort. They were really brave boys who killed her,” Mehsud said, according to the transcript.