Opinion - Editorials   

But who killed Benazir?

The investigators deployed by New Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command (SO15) at the request of the Pakistan government have done an excellent professional job, under difficult circumstances, of ascertaining the cause and circumstances of Benazir Bhutto’s death. The challenge was to come to a clear, reasonable conclusion given the failure of the Pakistani police to do “an extended and detailed search of the crime scene, the absence of an autopsy, and the absence of recognised body recovery and victim identification processes.” The experienced SO15 investigators pieced together enough evidence to conclude that Benazir died from a “rapidly fatal head injury” that occurred as the result of impact due to the powerful effects of the bomb blast, not from a bullet wound. They believe that the head impact occurred “somewhere in” the armoured vehicle’s escape hatch, which had a solid metal lip. They also concluded that there was only one suicide killer and that the person who fired shots also detonated the explosive. It is not the fault of the SO15 investigators that their “reliable conclusions” have been received in Pakistan with scepticism, if not outright disbelief. The government’s widely disbelieved version seemed to suggest that Benazir’s death was an indirect, almost accidental result of the assassination attempt. The critical difference is that while Pakistan’s Interior Ministry asserted that her head hit the ‘sunroof’ lever of her vehicle as she ducked the explosion, SO15 found that it was the tremendous force of the explosion that caused the fatal impact. The Pakistan People’s Party has not rejected the report outright but maintained that its leader died of a bullet wound.

Establishing culpability was not part of Scotland Yard’s remit. But 44 days after Benazir’s assassination, the precise cause of her death does not appear as significant as who was behind the killing, and fixing accountability for the security breach that allowed a suicide killer to get within two metres of Pakistan’s most important political leader. The Musharraf regime has only itself to blame if there are few takers for its story that Beithullah Mehsud, the South Waziristan-based Taliban warlord, was the mastermind of the assassination. It suffers from a massive credibility crisis and its actions since Benazir’s assassination have not helped. The political and ideological ambiguity within Pakistan on terrorism and its perpetrators makes people think that Islamist militancy is nothing but a convenient label for the government to escape culpability for its own misdeeds. If after the February 18 general election the PPP becomes the party of government, its demand for a U.N.-backed international investigation could become the flashpoint of a confrontation with President Pervez Musharraf.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

But who killed Benazir?
Signs of a slowdown
Travelling while Pakistani
China bid to link up with Central Asia
The bygone golden age of the press is a myth
Claims of cultural shift in U.S. deep south put to test
Wake-up call
Nuclear deal
Shocking incident
On socialism
A true Gandhian
One old friend is better than two new ones: Viktor Zubkov

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu