A militant alleged to have been part of the cell that murdered former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has appeared in a Taliban video denying his involvement.
Ikramullah is believed to have been a back-up suicide bomber, who was meant to detonate his explosive vest if the first attacker did not succeed.
But officials say he walked away after the other bomber blew himself up, killing Ms. Bhutto and at least 20 others at a rally in Rawalpindi in 2007.
A senior Bhutto aide said he was lying.
In his first public statement on the case, Ikramullah appears in a video produced by a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban which was obtained by the BBC.
It is believed to have been filmed in eastern Afghanistan, where the militants are based.
Described as a “senior figure” in his group, Ikramullah repeatedly states in the video he was neither “involved” nor “aware of” the plot to kill Bhutto.
He is on a Pakistani list of most-wanted terror suspects, and has been named in court as the second suicide bomber.
Senator Rehman Malik, a former interior minister who was a close friend of Bhutto, told the BBC that he believed Ikramullah was “totally lying,” and that other suspects had named him in court as the second bomber.
A source with knowledge of Pakistani militant groups told the BBC that until recently Ikramullah was openly and proudly claiming his involvement.
But last year he was attacked by other rival Islamists in Afghanistan, and his family received threats from the Pakistani security services.
As a result, it is believed, he was advised by his group’s leaders to make a video denying his involvement.
The source told the BBC: “The whole of the Pakistani Taliban, and even young children from the tribal areas know he was involved.”
Bhutto was elected as prime minister in 1988 and 1993.
After a period in exile she returned to Pakistan in 2007 to campaign for elections.
She survived an assassination attempt in October 2007 when suicide bombers targeted a parade welcoming her at Karachi airport.
More than 150 people died.
Bhutto was killed two months later at a rally in Rawalpindi.
Five alleged militants charged with involvement in the plot were last year acquitted, but remain in detention pending an appeal.
European MPs spend night on migrant ship in desperate bid to secure dock
A group of five European politicians spent Sunday night on a rescue ship stranded in the Mediterranean with hundreds of migrants on board, in a desperate bid to secure a port for the vessel to dock.
The lawmakers – three Germans, one Portuguese and one Spaniard – spent four hours on board the rescue ship Lifeline, as they negotiated with Italian and Maltese authorities for permission to dock, according to the vessel’s German operator, a non-governmental organisation also called Lifeline.
The ship has been in limbo for five days after picking up hundreds of migrants off the Libyan coast on Thursday and being refused permission to dock in both Malta and Italy.
It is currently stranded 24 miles (38 kilometers) off the Maltese coast with 234 migrants and 17 crew members on board.
The parliamentarians are urgently seeking permission for Lifeline to dock within the next 48 hours, as conditions deteriorate on board and the weather is expected to worsen, according to Ruben Neugebauer, spokesman of the German non-governmental organisation Sea Watch which is also helping coordinate the mission.
The ship has enough water, food and fuel to reach Malta and Italy, he added.
One of the MPs on board, Michel Brandt of Germany’s Left Party, described the conditions as “unbearable” and said migrants “need medical care.”
He posted images on his Twitter account of people huddled under blankets on deck.
It is the second instance this month of a rescue ship being forced to drift for days on end in the Mediterranean as Italy and Malta wrangle over responsibility.
Just weeks ago, the Aquarius which was carrying more than 600 migrants, eventually docked in Spain after Italy’s new hardline interior minister and leader of the anti-immigration League party, Matteo Salvini, refused to allow the ship to dock.
Meanwhile a second vessel, a cargo ship operated by Danish transportation company Maersk, is also stranded in the Mediterranean after picking up 113 migrants off the coast of Libya on Friday morning, and being refused permission to dock in Italy.
The cargo ship had been travelling between Libya and Malta when the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Center (MRCC) called on it Thursday evening to rescue the migrants, Maersk said in a statement.
Under international maritime laws, the cargo ship was obliged to assist, but it has been left in limbo after it was denied a port of entry and the company is now “awaiting further instruction from authorities,” the statement added.
Doctor in Spain faces court over Franco-era ‘stolen babies’
It was almost half a century ago that Ines Madrigal was born in Spain and handed to a woman who was not her mother.
In all those years, she has seen no trace of her birth mother, nor any evidence that she was willingly given up for adoption.
Madrigal suspects she was one of Spain’s ninos robados — stolen babies – a victim of a sinister political practice that began after the Spanish Civil War and continued as recently as the 1990s.
Eduardo Vela, an 85-year-old obstetrician, faces court in the Spanish capital of Madrid on Tuesday, accused of abducting Madrigal as a newborn back in 1969.
Public prosecutors are seeking an 11-year jail term for the illegal detention of a minor and forging a public document.
The woman who adopted Madrigal – Ines Perez, who died two years ago – had told CNN in 2012 that Vela gifted her the baby.
Vela admits the signature on Madrigal’s birth certificate is his, but he denies any involvement in “stealing” Madrigal, and is seeking a full acquittal, court documents show.
Evidence is growing that babies were removed, at first during the Franco era from families seen as Republicans and given to others loyal to the fascist regime.
READ ALSO: Foreign Titbits: Benazir Bhutto assassination: ‘Most wanted’ in murder resurfaces
Some are believed to have been sold.
The issue only came to light in 2011, when friends Juan Luis Moreno and Antonio Barroso publicly shared their stories, saying their fathers had bought them as children from a priest in the Spanish city of Zaragoza.
Madrigal has brought Vela to court, and hopes that her case shines a light on the many others that have gone ignored.
“I am not expecting that Eduardo Vela will tell me who my mother is, I know that is almost impossible,” Madrigal told CNN.
“But I do hope for a favorable sentence that can open the door to do something about the statute of limitations, which is blocking many complaints.”
Many of the allegations related to the stolen babies have failed to reach the courts as some of the alleged crimes have passed the statute of limitations.
At least 2,000 official cases of stolen children have been filed with Spanish prosecutors, but some victims’ groups believe there could be tens of thousands more.
Rescuers search for teenage soccer team ‘trapped’ in cave
Navy divers are searching a flooded cave for 12 missing boys in northern Thailand, three days after they’re believed to have ventured inside with their soccer coach.
As search teams pushed deeper into Tham Luang Nang Non Cave in Chiang Rai on Tuesday, hopes remained high that the boys and their coach would survive the ordeal.
“We are still optimistic they are all alive,” Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon told the Bangkok Post. “Even though they may not have anything to eat, they should have water to drink.”
Rising waters then blocked the path, which is about as wide as a single person, leaving the group stuck inside the cave network, Kamolchai Kotcha, an official with Thailand’s national parks authority, told CNN on Monday.
“We have been working almost 24 hours but there are many limitations, the caves are pitch dark and very low level of oxygen in some areas, and scattering rains just made our task more difficult,” said Kotcha.