Who killed Ms Benazir Bhutto?

The three members UN Commission of enquiry into Ms Bhutto's assassination on December 27, 2007, is presently in the country. In addition to visiting the Liaquat Garden where she had addressed a rally shortly before being killed, they have met a number of officials from the police and the administration as well as politicians. Quoting the precedent of a UN investigation of Mr Rafik Hariri, former Prime Minister of Lebanon, killed in Beirut in February 2005 by a time bomb, PPP demanded investigation of Benazir's death through the UN. They did not expect an impartial enquiry under Musharraf who was the president as well as the chief of the army staff at that time. The media and the opinion makers were quick to point out that the analogy did not hold. The UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon for investigation of Hariri's death established in February 2007 was demanded by foreign powers (US, Britain, France and EU) that suspected foul play by Syria. Lebanon in fact resisted the move but agreed conditionally in the end. Normally, sovereign countries do not invite international bodies for criminal investigation on their soil. The UN procedures are tedious and bureaucracy ridden: more than four years after Mr Hariri's death, the enquiry is yet to be concluded. Musharraf did not yield to that demand but rather invited the London Metropolitan Police for the investigation that was asked to find the cause of the death, not the killer. They concluded that the roof latch of the vehicle against which Ms Bhutto's head struck as she collapsed caused her death. So the public did not accept this finding. In the meanwhile, the media pointed out serious security lapses. Why adequate security measures were not taken when Ms Bhutto, in a letter to Musharraf, expressed serious apprehension of an attack on her life, the media asked. She had named three persons conspiring to kill her. Ms Bhutto had survived the suicide explosions in her mammoth reception at the Karachi airport killing over a hundred people on October 18, 2007. After that no chances should have been taken on her security arrangements. Also, there was the serious issue of the destruction of forensic evidence soon after her assassination. Anyway by February 2008, the general elections brought a new PPP government in power, to be followed by Musharraf's resignation and election of Mr Zardari as the president. The PPP reservations on the investigation by the local police into this tragic crime should have disappeared as the Party itself was now in power. In the event, the PPP rather stayed the course on the issue and pressed with a UN commission to probe into Ms Bhutto's death. As a result, after protracted goings and comings, the UN formed a commission at a cost of $70 million to Pakistan. The commission, formally starting its enquiry on the July 1, is finally here (mid August 2009) on their first visit, nearly two years after the incident. According to them, they will report the result to the secretary general in six months. According to the chairman of the commission and the terms of reference signed between the GOP and the UN secretary general, they are not holding a criminal investigation into the murder. They will merely report on the cause of Ms Bhutto's death. There is thus no possibility of this enquiry identifying the killers without which no conspiracy can be unravelled. While the commission moves on a "limited mandate", the criminal investigation of the case has been transferred from the Punjab Police to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). The Punjab Police made little progress in 21 months; we shall see what the FIA reveals and when. Baitullah Mehsud who was accused by the US and the GOP of the crime (he had promptly denied responsibility) is dead. Just before Mehsud's death a member of the commission said: "It is not possible to question a person who is not accessible." With his death, that line of enquiry is closed. How unfortunate that the people with Ms Bhutto at the time of her death, who had heard the fires shot followed by a blast, should not say much. All the occupants of the SUV carrying Ms Bhutto, except her, survived although one of them, a party worker, was later murdered in Karachi. Amin Fahim was sitting on one side of Mohtarama and Naheed Khan was on the other. Senator Safdar Abbasi, with a mike, was in the rear. These are all heavy weights of the PPP. What is more, they were all very close aides of Ms Bhutto; they must know something that they can share. But other than some cursory interviews, their detailed version of this tragedy has not come out. It follows that the finding of the commission will, like Musharraf's investigation through the Scotland Yard, not answer the disturbing question: who killed BB? They will make a verbose report but stay within their limited mandate which, we need to remind ourselves, was agreed between the SG and the GOP. The writer is a former ambassador at large