CIA base attacker was Hakimullah Mehsud’s companion: video

A Jordanian who blew himself up in Afghanistan, killing seven CIA agents and his Jordanian handler, said in a video broadcast on Saturday the act he was planning was for revenge. "We tell our emir Baitullah Mehsud we will never forget his blood. It is up to us to avenge him in and outside America," Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi said about a Taliban leader killed in a US attack in August. "This is a message to the enemies of the (Muslim) nation -- the CIA and Jordanian intelligence services," said the bearded man in military uniform, identified by Al-Jazeera television as Balawi. A relative later confirmed in Jordan that the man shown in the video was indeed Balawi -- a Jordanian of Palestinian origin who moved with his family to Jordan after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. According to the monitoring group IntelCenter the man sitting next to Balawi is Hakimullah Mehsud, who succeeded Beitulah Mehsud as head of the Pakistan Taliban. Balawi blew himself up at a US military base in Khost, near the Pakistani border on December 30, killing seven CIA agents and his Jordanian handler, a top intelligence officer and member of the royal family. Jihadist websites have identified Balawi as a double agent who duped Western intelligence services for months before turning on his handlers. But a senior Jordanian official told on Wednesday that "Jordan has benefited since a year ago from anti-terrorist information provided by Humam Khalil al-Balawi and shared them with other (intelligence) services as part of the fight against terrorism. "We will never forget that he (Mehsud) said Sheikh Osama bin Laden was not on our soil (Pakistan) but that if he should come we would protect him," the man said. "He kept his promise and paid for it with his life," he added about Mehsud, the Pakistan Taliban chief killed in US drone attacks last August. Al-Jazeera reported that the video shows Balawi training at a shooting range, but did not broadcast that part of the footage. On Thursday, Islamist websites quoted the head of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, as saying the bomber left a will saying the Khost attack was revenge for "our righteous martyrs" and named several top militants killed in drone attacks in Pakistan.The slain militant masterminds named in the will included Mehsud, who was blamed for a wave of deadly attacks, notably the December 2007 killing of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Also named was Abu Saleh al-Somali, described as part of Al-Qaeda's core leadership and responsible for plotting attacks in Europe and the United States. He was killed in a drone strike near the Afghan border last month. The suicide attack at a US military base near the Pakistani border on December 30 was the deadliest attack against the Central Intelligence Agency since 1983. Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh acknowledged that Amman had a counter-terrorism role in Afghanistan, during a news conference in Washington on Friday with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.