It is not clear what the Pakistan government stands to gain by disproving the use of a gun by the assassin of Benazir Bhutto,
FORMER Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhuttos assassination on December 27, 2007 has triggered several controversies that are symptomatic of the countrys political malaise. The most contentious of them is the demand of Benazirs supporters in the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) that the incident, in which 27 other persons were also killed, should be probed by an international agency under the aegis of the United Nations. This is an unusual request that has heavy political overtones.
The governments response was predictable. After initial outright rejection, it settled for international cooperation to an investigation by the Rawalpindi Police. In line with this stand, it sought the assistance of Scotland Yard. A team from that fabled police force has already arrived in Pakistan to assist the local police in identifying the assassins. Nearly a fortnight into the killing, there has been no major breakthrough. I am not all that sure whether Scotland Yard can achieve anything significant in respect of an incident that is mired in Pakistani politics.
This is a difficult and complicated investigation, which should pose the stiffest challenge even to an experienced police officer. There are several theories about the mode of killing itself and the nature of injuries suffered by Benazir. There is reasonable agreement only with regard to the point that there were two stages in which the whole conspiracy was executed with clinical precision.
First was the opening of fire from a weapon (initially referred to as an AK- 47 and now said to be a pistol) by an assassin whose identity can be barely made out from the video pictures released by the media. He must have been a good marksman, as he aimed at the neck and head because he knew Benazir was wearing a bullet-proof vest, and he got the target accurately. There is no information that the weapon used was recovered at the scene.
The second stage was the explosion set off by a suicide bomber in the vicinity of the car in which Benazir was travelling. It is anybodys guess whether it was the gunman who, after opening fire at Benazir, set off the explosion, or there was a another person with him. Whether the shooter-assassin was also killed in the explosion is also not known. If he has survived, he will be the focus of the investigators.
A major public row with regard to the circumstances of the assassination could affect adversely the credibility of the investigation. This relates to whether Benazir died of bullet wounds, as her followers suggest, or because of the impact of a hit against the lever of the sunroof of her vehicle when she tried to duck the firearm attack. The latter is the version put out by the government. There is great scope for speculation here. A post-mortem would have more or less clearly pronounced an opinion on this. Toyota, the manufacturer of her vehicle, is emphatic that the impact of the roof lever could not have killed Benazir. If this is true, the government stand that bullets did not cause the fatality is subject to a huge doubt. A latest press report speaks of a volte-face by President Pervez Musharraf, who now does not rule out the possibility of Benazir having been killed by gunfire.
It is not clear what the Pakistan government stands to gain by disproving the use of a gun by the assassin, particularly when his presence within yards of the vehicle was more than well established by the video images. The irrefutable evidence that proves the presence of the gun, coupled with the unassailable facts of the explosion, points to a failure of the security arrangements. The Pakistani authorities cannot, therefore, be absolved of their failure to protect Benazir.
President Musharrafs remark (on CBSs 60-minutes) that Benazir was responsible for her own death because she chose to stick out of the vehicle to greet the crowd, ignoring all advice, was graceless, to say the least.
One important component of a homicide investigation is the post-mortem examination of the victims body. Under Section 174 of the Indian Criminal Procedure Code, 1973, a police officer who had initiated action for the conduct of an inquest into a suicide or suspicious death by an Executive Magistrate, shall, after the inquest is over, send the body to the nearest Civil Surgeon for a post-mortem. I am told that such a provision for a mandatory medical examination exists in the Pakistan Code as well.
The inquest and post-mortem reports are vital documents that the Investigating Officer (I.O.) relies upon to decide the further course of investigation. A decision on whether to prosecute the accused (where he is identified and brought to book) or drop further action in the matter would depend largely on this. While I know that in cases of clear accidental death a post-mortem is sometimes waived by the I.O. at the request of the near ones of the deceased, in events like the Benazir assassination, he has no option at all.
It is a matter of surprise, therefore, that Benazirs body was not subjected to an autopsy. What is funnily described as an external post-mortem, in which X-ray pictures alone are taken, was done in the case. There are two versions here. According to one, the police refused to subject Benazirs body to a postmortem examination. The other version is that it was at the request of Asif Ali Zardari, Benazirs husband, that such an examination was dispensed with. It is just possible that the police action in not going through with the medical examination was in deference to Zardaris wishes, and was not a suo motu rejection of the need for a post-mortem.
In either case, the moot point is whether the Rawalpindi Police were correct in yielding to Zardari, however well-merited his stand might have been. Actually, if one goes by what Zardari told television channels, his position was that he did not believe that the Rawalpindi Police would do an honest investigation. If a police force buckles under such extraneous pressures, I do not think any homicide investigation can ever stand up to the rigours of scrutiny by a court.
The Pakistan government has said that it would not mind exhuming the body for subjecting it to a post-mortem. Going by the current levels of political acrimony in the country, it is highly doubtful that the PPP will ever agree to this apparently conciliatory offer by the government.
The lack of credibility of the Rawalpindi Police investigation and the obvious inconsistencies in the official version of the incident definitely support the case for an investigation by a non-Pakistani team. It would be naive, however, to expect the Pakistan government to agree to this. Seldom does a nation concede this demand because it has adverse implications for its sovereignty. International law does not also directly provide for this. Nevertheless, it is possible that Zardari may fight this in an international forum like the U.N. Security Council. Whether the Big Five will display a consensus on this subject is a matter of debate.
Notwithstanding this, there is a remote parallel here. When former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed in February 2005, and there was suspicion of a Syrian hand, the U.N. Security Council agreed to a probe by a select team of external investigators. The team has since submitted a report pointing to the involvement of some members of the Syrian security services. A special U.N. tribunal based in the Netherlands is shortly going to hear the evidence produced by the independent investigators.
I wonder whether the circumstances in which Benazir was killed are strong enough for the Security Council to go through with a similar process. Even if an independent investigating team were to be set up, my hunch is that the present Pakistan government will not extend even a fraction of the cooperation that the Syrian government gave to the investigators of the Hariri killing.
These are all mostly procedural questions that will become less and less important once the killer is identified. But then, who killed Benazir and what was the motive? More than 120 people were killed in Karachi on October 18, 2007, when bombs exploded at the procession to welcome Benazir Bhutto on her return from exile.
Benazir had a miraculous escape. There was no doubt that she was the target of the explosions. Obviously, there were forces which were not reconciled to her coming back to power in Pakistan. The elements which failed on that day managed to succeed two months later.
The first suspect immediately after the assassination was the Musharraf administration, especially the intelligence outfit. The fact that Musharraf himself had a narrow escape on two occasions is indicative of the uneasy situation that prevails in Pakistan, especially in and around Rawalpindi. In the absence of reasonable proof that a conspiracy had been hatched by the President, it would be unfair to indict him solely on the basis of the fact that he and Benazir did not enjoy a good relationship.
The suspicion thereafter shifted to the armed forces, which had reported the infiltration of its junior ranks by Al Qaeda or organisations that sympathise with it, such as the Jaish-e-Mohammed. These elements were known to have been responsible for the attempts on President Musharraf in 2003. In the case of Benazir, they had a known antipathy to her as a woman. They were also opposed to her because she was the daughter of a Shia.
Besides, Benazirs stand that she would invite the United States Army to hunt for Osama bin Laden, and that nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan (who had passed on sensitive information to Libya, North Korea and Iran) should be allowed to be interrogated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) did not also endear her to them.
In sum, the investigation would veer round suspicions and conjectures. In a country where the armed forces hold sway over the administration, and have forged many undesirable connections, how can a police investigation succeed, especially if it has to question those who are close to persons exercising enormous extra-legal authority?
It may require a superhuman effort to identify and bring to book even those directly responsible for the killing because Pakistan has a vast porous border that is friendly to those on the extremist fringe. As for the others, who were in the background and gave moral and material support for doing away with Benazir, one can safely say they will go scot-free.
