Miranshah, Pakistan: The main spokesman for Pakistan's Taliban said on Thursday the group neither trained nor recruited the Pakistani-American charged with terrorism over an attempted New York bombing.
"We don't even know him. We did not train him," Azam Tariq, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman, told two AFP reporters by telephone from an undisclosed location.
A video allegedly from the TTP claimed responsibility for the New York car bomb attempt. The credibility of that claim has been widely questioned.
The Taliban spokesman, whose voice was recognised by both the AFP reporters familiar with him, congratulated Faisal Shahzad on the attempted bomb attack, but suggested he may have been trained by other militant factions.
"The job he has done was a tremendous one and we praised him for this job but the fact is that we even do not know Faisal," he said.
"He may be trained by any other militant group," the spokesman added.
"I deny this claim that Taliban were involved in this incident. This is a propaganda against us. If we are involved in something, we admit it."
Despite Tariq's claim, there are suggestions that TTP, originally an umbrella of nebulous cells, has become increasingly fragmented since a major Pakistani military offensive last year and in the wake of US drone attacks.