Last week I reported that a bomb had gone off in downtown Islamobad's (that's the capital of Pakistan for those of you in my intro classes) Marriott hotel. While Pakistani authorities tried to play down the blast as an accident, the fact that the blast was in a lobby frequented by Westerners immediately gave rise suspicions. Turns out, these suspicions were well founded. While ex-Gitmo inmates in Brittain are busy suing the US for illegaly holding them for doing nothing more than studying the Religion of Peace under Osama bin Laden, and current Chinese inmates beg the US not to send them back to China, others have been busy bombing the J.W. Marriot in Islamobad. Via LGF this Reuters piece:

Abdullah Mehsud, a former Guantanamo Bay inmate who masterminded the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers, has claimed responsibility for a blast last week at Islamabad's Marriott Hotel, a journalist said on Monday.

Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai said Abdullah, the target of a huge manhunt after the kidnapping of the engineers last month, made the claim after contacting him by telephone from an undisclosed location on Sunday.

"We carried out the Marriott bomb blast," Yusufzai quoted him as saying.

An explosion hit the Marriott Hotel on Thursday, injuring seven people, including a U.S. diplomat, two Italians and the Pakistani prime minister's chief security officer.

The government and the hotel immediately said it was not a terrorist attack and was most probably caused by an electrical short circuit.

But the State Department said it believed the blast, which happened while 11 U.S. officials were at the hotel for a dinner, was caused by a bomb and the U.S. embassy has advised its citizens to stay away from the Marriott.

Posted by: Rusty at 01:47 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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