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Official heading Karachi blast probe quits

ISLAMABAD: A police official heading the investigations into the October 19 attack on Benazir Bhutto’s homecoming procession in Karachi has stepped down from the probe days after the former Prime Minister said she had no trust in him.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said on Wednesday Deputy Inspector-General of Police Manzur Mughal had gone on leave and a new investigation team would soon be set up.

Ms. Bhutto had accused the police official of being associated with the alleged torture of her husband Asif Zardari when he was in prison in 1999. The investigations have not yet made any headway. Investigators have not been able to determine if both bombings on the procession were suicide attacks or if one of them was a car bomb or a grenade explosion.

No arrests have been made yet in connection with the attack, which the government has blamed on Islamist militants without specifying any group. Ms. Bhutto said soon after the attack that both blasts were caused by suicide-bombers but believes that whichever group was responsible, it was carrying out orders from powerful individuals in government.

Ms. Bhutto said she wrote to President Musharraf two days before her October 18 arrival in Pakistan, naming the individuals she believed were plotting against her.

Geo TV, which said on Wednesday it had a copy of the letter, reported that Ms. Bhutto named Punjab Chief Minister Pervez Elahi, Intelligence Bureau head Brigadier (retd) Ejaz Shah and Hassan Waseem Afzal, a former official of the National Accountability Bureau who was handling the corruption cases against her.

But in the same letter, in another list of three people she wanted investigated in case of an attack on her life, Ms. Bhutto dropped the former NAB official and included former Inter-Services Intelligence Lt. Gen (retd) Hamid Gul.

The government has not reacted to the leaked letter, but in response to intense speculation in the media about the identity of the individuals over the last few days, a spokesman for the president came out strongly for the IB director-general earlier this week.

Brig (retd) Shah was neither being investigated nor was his removal from the post on the cards, the spokesman said.

Railways Minister Sheikhh Rashid, who counts himself as a supporter of the Benazir-Musharraf alliance, warned the allegations could strain the relationship, and could send up in smoke an ordinance withdrawing corruption cases against Ms. Bhutto.

Meanwhile, a legal adviser to Ms. Bhutto expressed concerns that her name was still on the government’s “exit control list,” which prevents citizens from leaving the country. The Interior Ministry spokesman said he was unaware that her name was on the list.

Although the PPP leader has been careful to keep the President out of her accusations, the Punjab chief minister, a leading light of the ruling faction of the Pakistan Mulsim League, and his cousin, party leader Chaudhary Shujat Hussain, are close to President Musharraf. So is the IB chief.

Earlier this week, Mr. Hussain rejected the accusation against Mr. Elahi, and said if Ms. Bhutto could point fingers, so could he, and went on to accuse the PPP leader and her husband of staging the attacks in order to win sympathy.

Ms. Bhutto’s distrust in the investigation prompted her to demand that the government seek the help of foreign forensic experts, reiterated by her security adviser Rehman Malik on Wednesday. Separately, the Pakistan Army is reported to have deployed 2,500 soldiers in Swat district of the North West Frontier Province, where a radical preacher has set up a virtual parallel government, with a fighting force of hundreds, and a taxation system.

Maulana Fazlullah has been using an unlicensed FM radio frequency to preachjihad against the Musharraf regime.

He also uses the radio to campaign for a Taliban-style regime, banning music and asking girls not to attend schools. He disrupted a polio vaccination programme in the area, and his men are believed to have been behind the bombing of a rock Buddha in Swat, damaging it considerably. A military release said additional Frontier Corps personnel had been deployed in three areas of the district to help the local administration to control the “deteriorating law and order situation and militant activities. Additional regular troops have been sent and would remain on standby to help out if required, the military said.

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