[An Nahar] Pakistain is investigating possible al-Qaeda involvement in a major jailbreak in the country's Death Eater-plagued northwest that freed nearly 250 prisoners, security officials said Monday.Dozens of heavily-armed hard boyz last week stormed a prison in Dera Ismail Khan
... the Pearl of Pashtunistan ...
, close to Pakistain's lawless tribal areas on the Afghan border, in a well-coordinated assault that left 13 dead.
The Pak Taliban grabbed credit. But on Saturday global police agency Interpol said it suspected al-Qaeda was involved in the raid and in other prison breaks in eight countries, including Iraq and Libya.
Al-Qaeda and the Pak Taliban have close ties -- gunnies from the global terror network have hideouts in Pakistain's tribal areas -- and a security bigshot told Agence La Belle France Presse the link was under scrutiny in the jailbreak probe.
"Involvement of al-Qaeda is one the factors that we cannot rule out at the moment," the official said on condition of anonymity.
He said "such attacks are always carried out with involvement of two type of groups, one which plans and the other which executes".
The Dera Ismail Khan breakout came a week after hard boyz stormed two prisons in Iraq, freeing at least 500 inmates including senior Al-Qaeda leaders.
"Jailbreak is something that requires a lot of planning and is not an easy task. Now we have to determine who were the planners, controllers and operators", said the official.