Militants, Benazir aides allege cover-up

Trackback URL

Download PDF

A militant group said yesterday it had no link to Benazir Bhutto’s killing, dismissing government claims as a bitter dispute erupted over how the opposition leader was killed.

Pakistan, meanwhile, indicated yesterday it would delay January elections because of turmoil caused by Benazir’s death.

A close aide to Benazir Bhutto told AFP Saturday she saw a bullet wound in the Pakistani opposition leader’s head when she bathed her body after her assassination.

Benazir’s spokeswoman Sherry Rehman, who said she was in the former premier’s motorcade at the time of the gun and suicide attack, rejected government claims that the death was caused when Benazir Bhutto’s head hit her sunroof.

“I was actually part of the party which bathed her body before the funeral,” said Rehman, who added that her car was used to transport Benazir to hospital.

“There was a bullet wound I saw that went in from the back of her head and came out the other side.

“We could not even wash her properly because the wound was still seeping. She lost a huge amount of blood.”

Rehman accused the government of mounting a cover-up over Benazir’s death. But the government challenged the cover-up claim saying the Pakistani government would let the body of Benazir be exhumed for inquiry if her party requested it, interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema said on Saturday.

With questions raised about the official account of how she died, which has been rejected by Bhutto’s aides and supporters, Javed Cheema said the Pakistan government had told the truth.

“We do not require the assistance of the international community,” he said when asked about calls for an outside probe into her assassination, which has plunged the nuclear-armed Islamic nation deeper into turmoil.

“We understand the environment, the international community does not understand the environment,” Cheema told a news conference.

Violent protests and looting which have left at least 38 people dead have rocked the nation of 160 million Muslims since Benazir was assassinated at a campaign rally in the northern city of Rawalpindi on Thursday.

“In two days 38 innocent people have lost their lives and 53 have been injured,” Cheema told AFP.

Cheema also said the violence had also caused tens of million dollars in damage, with hundreds of shops, offices, banks, trains and cars burned by rioters following Bhutto’s death on Thursday

The United States and Western powers have urged Pakistan to commit to the democratic process in the aftermath of her death, but leading opposition figure Nawaz Sharif has already said his party would boycott the polls.

Benazir’s Pakistan People’s Party, which has accused the government of trying to cover up her death, has said it will take a decision on Sunday on whether to take part in the parliamentary elections scheduled for January 8.

The crisis-hit country’s election commission said it would hold an urgent meeting on Monday to decide the election’s fate, but it indicated a delay could be on the cards.

“All activities pertaining to pre-poll arrangements, including printing of ballot papers and logistics as well as training of polling personnel, have been adversely affected,” it said in a statement.

In some places, the commission said, the security situation was “not conducive” to holding the elections which Benazir had come home from exile in October to contest.

It cited the death of an election candidate in a bomb blast and said election commission offices in nine districts had been set on fire and that voter lists had been “reduced to ashes”.

The polls would lack credibility without the participation of Benazir’s PPP, which has been infuriated by the government’s official account of their leader’s death.

Benazir died after a suicide attack targeted her vehicle at a campaign rally in the northern city of Rawalpindi. Early reports and witnesses said she had been shot before a bomb exploded nearby.

However the interior ministry said she had no gunshot or shrapnel wounds. It said the opposition leader died after smashing her head on her car’s sunroof as she tried to duck.

The ministry also blamed al-Qaeda, saying intelligence services had intercepted a call from Baitullah Mehsud, considered the extremist group’s top leader for Pakistan.

Senior members of Benazir Bhutto’s party dismissed the government’s version of events as “lies”.

“There was a bullet wound I saw that went in from the back of her head and came out the other side,” Benazir’s spokeswoman Sherry Rehman, who was involved in washing her body for burial, told AFP.

“This is ridiculous, dangerous nonsense because it is a cover-up of what actually happened,” said Rehman.

Farooq Naik, Bhutto’s lawyer and a senior PPP official, said Benazir had a second bullet wound in the abdomen.

Benazir was an outspoken critic of al-Qaeda-linked militants blamed for scores of bombings in Pakistan and had received threats.

But she had also accused elements from the intelligence services of involvement in a suicide attack on a Benazir rally in October that left 139 dead and which she only narrowly escaped.

Maulana Omar, a spokesman for alleged al-Qaeda kingpin Mehsud, denied involvement in the attack and expressed grief over Benazir’s death.

“This is a conspiracy of the government, army and intelligence agencies,” said the spokesman from Waziristan, a lawless tribal region where al-Qaeda leaders, including possibly Osama bin Laden, are alleged to be hiding.

One day after Benazir was laid to rest at her family’s mausoleum in southern Sindh province, Pakistan was virtually paralysed with most people unable to buy food or petrol, with all shops, fuel stations, banks and offices closed down.

The streets of the country’s main cities — Karachi, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore and Peshawar — were largely empty, and in many places there was evidence of violence and looting.

Analysts warned that Pakistan was facing its biggest crisis since Bangladesh split off from the country more than 35 years ago.

“We are heading towards a very uncertain phase of politics which has the potential to plunge the country into a state of anarchy,” Hasan Askari, former head of political science at Lahore’s Punjab University, told AFP.

The assassination has also thrust security concerns and foreign policy back into the US political spotlight less than a week before Americans start voting to decide their Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.

Leading democratic candidate Hillary Clinton called for an independent, international probe into Benazir’s murder, saying Musharraf’s government had no credibility.

“I think it’s critically important that we get answers and really those are due first and foremost to the people of Pakistan,” Clinton said.

Benazir was buried on Friday with hundreds of thousands of grief-stricken mourners following her coffin on the final journey to the family’s mausoleum in the village of Ghari Khuda Bakhsh.

Educated at Harvard and Oxford, Benazir first took the helm of Pakistan in 1988. She was ousted in 1990 amid corruption allegations but was premier again from 1993 to 1996.

She has been buried next to her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a former premier who was hanged by the military government in 1979.

Meanwhile, New Delhi has suspended two train services to Pakistan following violence in the wake of the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto, the railways ministry said.

Two trains were “cancelled on security considerations with immediate effect until further notice,” the ministry said in a statement late Friday.

The “Samjhauta (friendship) Express” runs between New Delhi and the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore.

The “Thar Express” — named after a desert — connects India’s Jodhpur city to the Pakistani town of Khokrapar and was reopened in 2006 after a gap of four decades to improve relations between the people of the rival nations. (AFP, AP)

Leave a Reply