BHUTTO WAS KILLED BY SINGLE ASSASSIN, SAY INVESTIGATORS
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Government insists that Mehsud ordered attack
Julian Borger, Declan Walsh and Ian Cobain in Islamabad
The Observer, UK
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Pakistani security officials investigating the killing of
Benazir Bhutto believe it was carried out by a single
assassin with a gun and a bomb. Investigators have
concluded that the man who fired at least three shots at
her also detonated the suicide bomb that exploded a second
later.
One of the principal pieces of physical evidence is his
severed head. Plastic surgeons have reconstructed the face
and printed the picture in two national newspapers,
offering 10 million rupees (UKP 78,000) for information
leading to his identification.
A police officer has said he started running towards the
gunman when he saw him raise his arm. 'He got there just
too late, and he saw him lower his head just before the
blast,' a senior Pakistani source said. 'That is what the
suicide bombers have been told to do to obliterate their
features.' In this case, however, the tactic appears to
have failed.
A second man with a beard and shawl, captured in pictures
of the assassination, turned out to be an innocent
bystander.
The government is sticking to its assertion that the
assassination was ordered by Baitullah Mehsud, an Islamic
militant with al-Qaeda links from south Waziristan. US and
British officials have said that an intercepted satellite
telephone conversation in which Mehsud offers
congratulations to a fellow militant for the killing
appears credible.
Investigators have cross-checked thousands of calls made
from the area around the assassination site in the run-up
to the killing against lists of numbers used by suspected
jihadis, leading to at least two arrests.
However, there are still conflicting accounts of Bhutto's
cause of death, even within President Pervez Musharraf's
government.
A Western official with extensive security expertise in
Pakistan said he believed 'conclusively' that Bhutto was
killed by the blast from the bomb and not by an assassin's
bullet. 'I do know the shots didn't hit her. The Interior
Ministry allowed me to be party to photos and other
materials that showed it wasn't a bullet.'
He said all the evidence supported the Pakistani
government's original - hotly contested - assertion that
Bhutto died from a violent blow to the head caused by the
suicide blast as she ducked into her vehicle. Film showing
her headscarf lifting up after the shooting was caused by
her attempt to quickly retreat into the car, he said.
However, a senior Pakistan government official said
investigators were looking into the possibility that their
initial conclusion was wrong and that she was shot.
The confusion served to emphasise the quagmire facing the
five detectives from Scotland Yard's Counter-Terrorism
Command wading into the middle of an inquiry that was mired
in political controversy and severely botched long before
they arrived. No autopsy was performed, the crime scene was
hosed down a few hours after the 27 December assassination,
and eye-witnesses left without being interviewed.
The official version of Bhutto's death, that she hit her
head on the lever of her car's sunroof, drew howls of
derision from the opposition, but a Musharraf aide said it
was based on the available medical evidence. 'The doctors
said the only wound was on the right side of the head. The
left side was intact and the shots and blast were from the
left,' he said.
Now officials are considering the possibility that Bhutto
turned her head after she heard the first shot and was then
hit on the right side by the second or third shots.
Another possibility is that the doctors missed an entry
wound on Bhutto's left side. 'The doctor [Mohammad Khan]
was asked, 'Did you examine the other side of her head?' He
said, 'I didn't have time. They all thought there would be
an autopsy,' the government official said.
Bhutto's widower and successor as leader of the Pakistan
People's Party (PPP), Asif Ali Zardari, refused to allow an
autopsy.
There were no pathologists among the seven doctors who
signed the medical report and the hospital was mobbed with
Bhutto supporters, who even pushed their way into the
operating theatre.
For all the evidence of police ineptitude, there is no
evidence of a government conspiracy. Bhutto would almost
certainly be alive if she had not ignored police advice and
stopped her armoured car on her way from a political rally,
so that she could stand up in her socks on the rear seat
and poke her head out of the sunroof to wave at supporters.
'She made herself such an easy target that a 16-year-old
boy could have walked up and got her,' a Western security
expert said.
More at:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2235968,00.html
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fruitella
Jai Maharaj) wrote:
> Bhutto was killed by single assassin, say investigators
>
> Benazir Bhutto
pakistani 'security' officials are themselves involved in terrorist
activities.
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
fruitella <visual...@yahoo.com> posted:
>
> www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj) posted:
> > Bhutto was killed by single assassin, say investigators
> >
> > Pakistani security officials investigating the killing of
> > Benazir Bhutto
> pakistani 'security' officials are themselves involved in terrorist
> activities.
There's no question about that.