WASHINGTON | The US State Department on Thursday offered a $ 5 million reward to help locate a Pakistani Taliban official linked to the attempted car bombing of Times Square in New York City in 2010 and various deadly attacks on Pakistan.
Washington is offering “rewards for information leading to locating or locating three key leaders associated with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) terrorist organization and its affiliated groups,” a state department statement said.
US diplomacy is offering five million dollars for information on Maulana Fazlullah, head of the TTP, the Pakistani Taliban movement.
It also offers up to $ 3 million for each leader of two TTP-related groups: Abdul Wali of Jamaat-ul-Ahrar and Mangal Bagh of Laskar-e-Islam.
For the US Department of Foreign Affairs, the TTP is in “close alliance with al-Qaeda” and the three men pose a threat to the security of the United States.
According to US officials, the TTP has provided explosive testing to Faisal Shahzad, who failed in his attempt to attack the car bomb in Times Square in May 2010.
The group claimed responsibility for the massacre of more than 150 people in 2014 at a school in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan.
The Taliban TTP movement was also responsible for the attack on Malala Yousafzai in 2012, which has since become a symbol of the struggle for girls’ access to education.
In another statement released on Thursday, the State Department also added two members of the extremist Shebab group in Kenya to its blacklist of “terrorists”: Ahmad Iman Ali and Abdifatah Abubakar Abdi.