The Hindu : Front Page : Government suspects more than one assailant

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Dec 29, 2007
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Government suspects more than one assailant

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema told a press conference here on Friday that the attack on Benazir Bhutto began with three rounds of gunfire, followed closely by an explosion. He did not rule out that two different persons were behind these separate events.

Pointing out that the suicide bomber had detonated himself on the left side of the vehicle, damaging it substantially on that side, he argued that for this reason, any shrapnel wound on Benazir should have also been on the same side.

That the injury was on the right side of her skull pointed to the lever in the car, which, he said, was blood-stained. X-rays had shown that no bullets were lodged in her body.

The four others in her “bullet-proof, bomb-proof” car were unhurt, and had Benazir resisted the temptation to stand up through the sun-roof to wave to her cheering supporters, she may have been alive, the spokesman said. “There was no bullet that hit, no pellet hit her, no splinter hit her,” he said, adding that she was clinically dead by the time she arrived at the Rawalpindi General Hospital.

Brig. Cheema also countered allegations that the government had not provided enough security to Benazir.

“No other political leader has been given so much security as we provided Ms. Benazir Bhutto,” he said.

Aside from her armour-plated vehicle, she was assigned four police mobiles with six men in each of them, and a senior superintendent of police was assigned to her, and was with her wherever she went. He said adequate security measures had been provided at the venue, including individual checking of all those entering Liaquat Bagh, but the best protection outside was the vehicle.

“I pray and wish she had not come out of the sun-roof,” Brig. Cheema said.

About the PPP’s complaints before the fateful rally that the explosive jammers provided for Benazir’s security were faulty, the spokesman said these devices could only stop remote-controlled explosive devices, not suicide bombers. He said a post-mortem was not conducted on Benazir at the request of her husband Asif Zardari, but the doctors had done a detailed “external post-mortem”. Brig Cheema said the government had intercepted communication from Beithullah Mesud to his followers congratulating them on the assassination of Benazir. The Al-Qaeda leader had issued a threat to the PPP leader before her October 18 arrival in Pakistan after an eight-year exile that he would kill her as no Muslim woman should aspire to public office, and for taking a “pro-American” stance.

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