[NYTr] More on Bhutto

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[The assassination is rapidly acquiring a patina of mythology already.
The New York Times is calling the video with the gunshots the "Pakistani
Zapruder film."  There's so much smoke being blown about by the Brits,
the ISI, US factions, etc. that none of it can really be believed.
Doctors, lawyers, indian chiefs -- all have their own axe to
grind.  Even Bhutto, shown in a YouTube video talking about
"letters" she exchanged with Musharraf about the previous
assassination attempt, is clearly watching her words very
carefully.  The Robert Novak column (3rd item below) is an
interesting look at the right-wing's line on it all. -NYTr]


sent by MichaelP 


The Jurist - Dec 31, 2007
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/12/pakistan-police-illegally-prevented.php


Police illegally blocked Bhutto autopsy

Pakistan police illegally blocked Bhutto autopsy: hospital lawyer

[JURIST]  Doctors  at  Rawalpindi  General  Hospital were prevented by 
police from carrying out an autopsy on former Pakistani Prime Minister 
Benazir  Bhutto   following her assassination   last  week,  a  hospital 
lawyer said Monday,  according  to  CNN.

Hospital manager Athar Minallah said that police  violated  Pakistani 
criminal  law  by preventing doctors from reaching  a  full  medical 
conclusion  about  Bhutto's cause of death , but Rawalpindi police chief 
Aziz Saud told CNN that  it  was Bhutto's husband rather than police that 
objected to the autopsy. CNN has more 
<http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/12/31/pakistan.autopsy/>

Bhutto's  husband  Sunday  called  for  an international investigation 
into   her  killing  similar  to  the  ongoing  UN investigation  into 
the  2005  assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister  Rafiq  Hariri. 
Bhutto was assassinated Thursday  at  a  political rally in Rawalpindi. 
She was campaigning in the lead-up to January 8 parliamentary elections.

                                   ***

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/12/31/pakistan.autopsy/

LAWYER: POLICE PREVENTED BHUTTO AUTOPSY

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Rawalpindi's police chief stopped doctors at 
the hospital where Benazir Bhutto died from conducting an autopsy, 
according to a lawyer on the hospital's board.

In a video released Sunday, Benazir Bhutto, far right, appears through the 
sunroof before shots ring out.

It  was  a violation of Pakistani criminal law and prevented a medical 
conclusion  about  what  killed  the former prime minister, said Athar 
Minallah,  who  serves  on  the  board that manages Rawalpindi General 
Hospital.

However,  the  police  chief  involved,  Aziz  Saud,  told CNN that he 
suggested an autopsy be done, but that Bhutto's husband objected.

The  revelation  came  on  Monday  after  new  videotape  of  Bhutto's 
assassination  emerged,  showing her slumping just after gunshots rang 
out.

The  tape provided the clearest view yet of the attack and appeared to 
show  that  Bhutto  was  shot.  That  would  contradict  the  Pakistan 
government's account.

Read Bhutto's full medical report here:

   <http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2007/images/12/31/bhutto.report.pdf>

A  previously  released  videotape  showed  a  man at the right of her 
vehicle  raising a gun, pointing it toward Bhutto, who was standing in her 
car with her upper body through the sunroof. He fired three shots, then 
there was an explosion.

In the video that emerged on Sunday, Bhutto was standing, and her hair and 
scarf appeared to move, perhaps from the bullet. Bhutto fell into the 
car,  then  came the blast.

These  images seem to support the theory that Bhutto died at the hands of 
a shooter before a bomb was detonated, killing another 23 people.

Doctors  at  Rawalpindi General Hospital declared the 54-year-old dead 
hours  after  Thursday's  attack,  but the cause of her death has been 
widely debated.

Pakistan's Interior Ministry announced on Friday that Bhutto died from a 
skull  fracture  suffered when she fell or ducked into the car as a result 
of  the  shots  or  the  explosion and crashed her head onto a sunroof 
latch. Photo See the likely sequence of events

Bhutto's  family  and  political party maintain that the government is 
lying, and insist she died from gunshot wounds.

Bhutto's  husband,  in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Monday, 
called  for  an  international  investigation  into  his wife's death, 
saying  the new video proves the Pakistani government "has been trying to 
muddy the water from the first day."

"Everything  is  now  very  clear that she was shot," Asif Ali Zardari 
said.

Zardari   also   called   on  the  U.S.  government  to  push  for  an 
international probe.

"I  want them to help me find out who killed my wife, the mother of my 
children," he said of the Bush administration.

Javed  Iqbal  Cheema, spokesman for Pakistan's Interior Ministry, said the 
government's  conclusion on Bhutto's death was based on "absolute facts, 
nothing but the facts" and "it was corroborated by the doctor's report."

But Minallah issued an open letter on Monday and released the doctors' 
clinical  notes to distance them from the government statement, and he 
also talked to CNN.

In  the  letter, Minallah said the doctors "suggested to the officials to 
perform  an autopsy," but that Saud "did not agree." He noted that under 
the law, police investigators have "exclusive responsibility" in deciding 
to have an autopsy.

Minallah  told CNN that he was speaking out because the doctors at the 
hospital were "threatened."

"They are government servants who cannot speak; I am not," he said. He did 
not elaborate on the threats against the doctors.

He said the lack of an autopsy has created "a perception that there is 
some kind of cover-up, though I might not believe in that theory."

"There  is  a  state within the state, and that state within the state 
does not want itself to be held accountable," Minallah said.

Cheema  said  the  government  had no objection to Bhutto's body being 
exhumed for an autopsy if the family requested it.

Her  widower has said the family was against exhumation because it did not 
trust the government.

Minallah  said  the  family could not have prevented an autopsy at the 
hospital without getting an order from a judge.

The  three-page  medical  report,  which  was signed by seven doctors, 
described Bhutto's head wound, but it did not conclude what caused it. It 
noted that X-ray images were made after she was declared dead. 
advertisement

The wound was described as an irregular oval of about 5 centimeters by 3 
centimeters above her right ear.

"Sharp  bones edges were felt in the wound," it read. "No foreign body
was felt in the wound."

                             ***

sent by Riaz Tayoub - activ-l

The Washington Post - Dec 31, 2007


What Bhutto Was Worried About 

By Robert D. Novak

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto followed two months of urgent pleas 
to the State Department by her representatives for better protection. 
The U.S. reaction was that she was worried over nothing, expressing 
assurance that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf would not let 
anything happen to her.

That attitude led a Bhutto agent to inform a high-ranking State 
Department official that her camp no longer viewed the backstage U.S. 
effort to broker a power-sharing agreement between Musharraf and the 
former prime minister as a good-faith effort toward democracy. It was, 
according to the written complaint, an attempt to preserve the 
politically endangered Musharraf as George W. Bush's man in Islamabad.

President Bush confirmed that judgment with his statement Thursday, 
within hours of learning that Bhutto was dead, when he urged that the 
elections scheduled for Jan. 8 be held in furtherance of Pakistani 
"democracy." That may be Musharraf's position, but it definitely is not 
the position of his critics. They believed the election would be a sham 
with Bhutto dead and with Saudi-backed former prime minister Nawaz 
Sharif boycotting the balloting, though Sharif's party reversed course 
yesterday.

The Bush administration decided months ago to broker a power-sharing 
arrangement, with the deeply unpopular Musharraf retiring from the army 
but remaining as president and the popular Bhutto taking a third try as 
prime minister (after twice being ousted by the military). That decision 
was based on Pakistan's strategic importance as a sanctuary for al-Qaeda 
and Taliban fighters. Bush was in a quandary. Bhutto was much tougher 
than Musharraf on Islamist extremists, but Bush had invested heavily in 
the general.

When I last saw Bhutto, over coffee in August at Manhattan's Pierre 
Hotel, she was deeply concerned about U.S. ambivalence but asked me not 
to write about it. She had not heard from Musharraf for three weeks 
after their secret July meeting in Abu Dhabi. She feared the Pakistani 
military strongman was not being prodded from Washington.

Next came Musharraf's state of emergency and purge of Pakistan's Supreme 
Court to guarantee legality of his questionable election as president. 
According to Bhutto's advisers, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice 
asked Bhutto in a telephone conversation to go along with that process 
in return for concessions from Musharraf. Bhutto agreed, but she got 
nothing in return.

The unsuccessful Oct. 18 attempt on Bhutto's life followed the regime's 
rejection of her requested security protection when she returned from 
eight years in exile. The Pakistani government vetoed FBI assistance in 
investigating the attack. On Oct. 26, Bhutto sent an e-mail to Mark 
Siegel, her friend and Washington spokesman, to be made public only in 
the event of her death.

"I would hold Musharraf responsible," Bhutto said in the message. "I 
have been made to feel insecure by his minions." She listed obstruction 
to her "taking private cars or using tinted windows," using jammers 
against roadside bombs and being surrounded with police cars. "Without 
him [Musharraf]," she said, those requests could not have been blocked.

In early December, a former Pakistani government official supporting 
Bhutto visited a senior U.S. government official to renew Bhutto's 
security requests. He got a brushoff, a mind-set reflected Dec. 6 at a 
Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state for South and Central 
Asian affairs, was asked to respond to fears by nonpartisan American 
observers of a rigged election. His reply: "I do think they can have a 
good election. They can have a credible election. They can have a 
transparent and a fair election. It's not going to be a perfect 
election." Boucher's words echoed through corridors of power in 
Islamabad. The Americans' not demanding perfection signaled that they 
would settle for less. Without Benazir Bhutto around, it is apt to be a 
lot less.

A more sinister fallout of a free hand from Washington for Pakistan 
might be Bhutto's murder. Neither her shooting on Thursday nor the 
attempt on her life Oct. 18 bore the trademarks of al-Qaeda. After the 
carnage, government trucks used streams of water to clean up the blood 
and, in the process, destroyed forensic evidence. If not too late,
would an offer and acceptance of investigation by the FBI be in order?