Islamabad: Pakistani police have seized a suicide jacket and explosives from the accomplice of a teenager who was arrested last week on suspicion of involvement in the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
Police in Dera Ismail Khan town in North West Frontier Province described Sher Zaman, the accomplice of 15-year-old Aitezaz Shah, as the mastermind of a "big terrorist plot".
Zaman, a former political official of South Waziristan tribal agency, was arrested on the basis of information provided by Shah, police said. He was living at Tariqabad in Dera Ismail Khan.
Police and security officials who raided Zaman's residence seized a jacket used in suicide attacks along with a switch and an electric detonator, four grenades and half a kilogram of explosives, police said today.
Shah, who was also arrested in Dera Ismail Khan on Thursday, told police that he had come to the town from Karachi to meet Zaman for getting instructions and to collect materials used in suicide attacks.
These were the first arrests made in the probe into Benazir's assassination.
Shah has told investigators that he was trained as a suicide bomber and was part of a five-man squad sent by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan commander Baitullah Mehsud to kill Benazir. Security personnel also raided Shah's home in Battal area of Mansehra district of NWFP yesterday.
Pakistani officials have been tight-lipped about the arrest of the two suspects. Interior Secretary Syed Kamal Shah has only confirmed that two persons were arrested in Dera Ismail Khan and that one of them, a teenage boy, had confessed to involvement in the attack on Benazir.
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