News
Saturday, April 17, 2010
UN report finds ‘deliberate’ faults in BB’s murder probe* Report creates impression army, intelligence have something to hide
Daily Times Monitor
LAHORE: The failure of Pakistani authorities to effectively investigate the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was “deliberate” and had been “severely hampered” by the country’s powerful intelligence agencies, a United Nations (UN) investigation report into the assassination concluded on Friday.
According to the New York Times, the 65-page report, issued in New York on Thursday, did not answer the question of who killed Benazir or the precise cause of death. It was concerned instead with looking into the facts and circumstances surrounding her death in a suicide bombing and gun attack at a political rally in December 2007.
Hiding: The report catalogued a litany of failings on the part of the local authorities before and after the attack that killed Benazir, leaving an impression of purposeful obstruction and raising questions of whether the “country’s military and intelligence establishment had something to hide”. The report criticised then Rawalpindi Chief Police Officer Saud Aziz’s role in the aftermath of the assassination, saying he made a series of decisions, which denied investigators valuable evidence, including to hose down the entire crime site just two hours after the attack. Investigators managed to collect just 23 pieces of evidence in a case that would typically have yielded thousands, the report highlighted.
It also called the inquiry conducted by the country itself, a “whitewash”.
Zardari not involved: The report in large part dismisses allegations that President Asif Ali Zardari had any hand in his wife, Benazir’s death, adding such conspiracy theories against the president “simply had no basis”.
Agents from the Inter-Services Intelligence were present at crucial points of the police investigation, including during the gathering of evidence at the crime scene and the forensic examination of Benazir’s vehicle, “playing a role that the police were reluctant to reveal to the commission,” the report said, referring to the UN panel.
It also pointed out former president Pervez Mushrraf’s failure to provide adequate security to a former head of state.
The report made no definitive judgement but it concluded, “No one believes that the 15-year-old suicide bomber acted alone.”
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk