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New twist to Benazir assassination

LONDON: In a new twist to the controversy over how the former Pakistan Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, died, a Western security official in Pakistan was on Sunday reported as “conclusively” confirming the Pakistani government’s claim that she was killed by the bomb blast that followed the shooting, and not hit by a bullet.

“I do know the shots didn’t hit her. The Interior Ministry allowed me to be party to photos and other material that showed it wasn’t a bullet,” he told The Observer.

The newspaper said the official, who had “extensive security expertise in Pakistan,” claimed that “all the evidence” supported the Pakistan government’s hotly-contested account that Benazir 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,” The Observer reported.

It said investigators believed that the attack was carried out by a “single assassin with a gun and a bomb.” The man who fired the shots also detonated the bomb in a suicide attack.

“A second man with a beard and a shawl, captured in pictures of the assassination, turned out be an innocent bystander,” the report said adding, however, that even within government circles confusion remained about the exact sequence of events.

A senior Pakistan government official was quoted as saying that investigators were looking into the possibility that their initial conclusion was wrong and that she was shot. Benazir’s husband Asif Ali Zardari told The Sunday Times that the night before she was killed he had “begged” her in a telephone conversation from Dubai to stop holding election rallies in view of the threat to her life.

“She had just addressed this public meeting in Peshawar where they’d caught this suicide bomber…I told her for God’s sake be careful, but she said: ‘What can I do? I have to go and meet my people.’ I pleaded with her: you stay home and I’ll go and do the rallies. You’re the mother,” Mr. Zardari told Christina Lamb, Benazir’s long-time friend and biographer.

He said besides the political will, nominating her successor, there was a long hand-written document setting out how her personal possessions, including clothes and shoes, were to be distributed.

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