[Marxism] NY Times says Bhutto's Assassin looks like "plainclothes intelligence official"

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

No doubt due to the flood of accurate information released in the  
international media regarding the death of Benazir Bhutto, the NY  
Times has reversed itself. Apparently now they have ample reason to  
disbelieve the official version of events proffered by a Pakistani  
spokesperson from the Ministry of the Interior.  Here's the  
clincher:  "The man with the gun who is seen opening fire on Ms.  
Bhutto just a few meters from her wore a short haircut similar to  
those of plainclothes intelligence officials. He is seen standing in  
front of a man whose head is covered in a shawl in the style of  
Pashtun men from the Pakistani tribal areas where Al Qaeda has  
strongholds. He is described in the newspaper, Dawn, as the suicide  
bomber who detonated a bomb after the shots were fired."


The New York Times

December 30, 2007

Bhutto’s Son and Husband to Lead Party

By JANE PERLEZ
LAHORE, Pakistan — Three days after the death of Benazir Bhutto, the  
Pakistan People’s Party on Sunday chose her 19-year-old son, Bilawal,  
and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, as co-leaders of the party, the  
biggest and most potent in Pakistan.

During a meeting of the party executive in Naudero in the western  
province of Sindh, Ms. Bhutto’s will was read, and the new political  
line up, which follows the dynastic tradition started with her  
father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the party founder, follows her wishes,  
party officials said.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, a tall and composed Oxford student, took the  
center chair at the news conference at the Bhutto family enclave as  
he read the announcement that the party would contest the coming  
election.

“The long and historic struggle for democracy will continue with  
renewed vigor,” he said. “My mother always said democracy was the  
best revenge.”

Ms. Bhutto’s husband, Mr. Zardari, said the party had passed a  
resolution that would be sent to the United Nations calling for an  
international inquiry into the circumstances of her death. He  
specified that the British government should help in the inquiry. He  
added the government did not accept the inquiries being conducted by  
the government of President Pervez Musharraf.

The decision to contest the election is seen as a pragmatic move to  
attract the massive sympathy vote that the party expects in the wake  
of Ms. Bhutto’s assassination. Some analysts said they believed the  
party could top the government party’s vote, and command a new  
parliament.

But the government indicated Sunday that the election, scheduled for  
Jan. 8, would likely be delayed, perhaps as much as four months,  
leaving vast uncertainties over the volatile political scene here.

The news conference was an emotional affair, dominated by Mr.  
Zardari, who spoke in Urdu, often in a voice of near rage. Mr.  
Zardari, known as Mr. Ten Percent during his reign as Minister for  
Investment during Ms. Bhutto’s second term as Prime Minister, was  
jailed in Pakistan for eight years on corruption charges. Mr. Zardari  
still faces corruption charges in Switzerland, his lawyer there said  
earlier this week.

On Sunday, he said the coming election would be a “war against the  
people in the government of Pakistan now.” It was not a war against  
the army, he added.

He was particularly tough on President Pervez Musharraf, calling his  
political party, a faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, the “Qatil”  
League.The word “Qatil” in Urdu means murderer.

When reporters began directing questions at his son, Mr. Zardari  
stepped in saying that Bilawal was still of a “tender” age, and that  
one question was enough. In answer to that question, Mr. Bhutto  
Zardari said he would return to run the party full time once he had  
completed his studies at Oxford.

Mr. Zardari urged the main opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, who heads  
a faction of the Pakistan Muslim League and promised to boycott the  
election, to contest the election, too. Mr. Sharif is likely to  
follow the recommendation.

For the last several days, Mr. Sharif has gone out of his way to show  
conciliation towards the Bhutto clan, showing up at the hospital as  
soon as she was pronounced dead and then following up with a visit to  
her family compound to offer prayers after her burial.

Mr. Sharif said that together his party and the Pakistan Peoples  
Party party can make common cause against the Musharraf government.

As pressure increased on Pakistan to accept an international inquiry  
into Ms. Bhutto’s death, the team of doctors who frantically tried to  
revive her Thursday said they had requested an autopsy but were  
rebuffed by the chief of police in Rawalpindi, according to a member  
of the board of the hospital where she was treated.

The question of an autopsy has become central to the circumstances of  
Ms. Bhutto’s death because of conflicting versions put forward by the  
Pakistani government of how she died.

On the night Ms. Bhutto died, an unnamed Interior Ministry spokesman  
was quoted by the official Pakistani news agency as saying that the  
former prime minister had died of a “bullet wound in the neck by a  
suicide bomber.”

The next day, Javed Iqbal Cheema, the Interior Ministry spokesman,  
said at a news conference that Ms. Bhutto had died of a wound  
suffered when she hit her head on a lever attached to the sunroof of  
the vehicle that was carrying her through a crowd after a political  
rally. “Three shots were fired, but they missed her,” Mr. Cheema  
said. “Then there was an explosion.”

The explanation was greeted with disbelief by Ms. Bhutto’s  
supporters, ordinary Pakistanis and medical experts outside the  
government.

Pakistani and Western security experts said they believed the  
government’s insistence that Ms. Bhutto was not killed by a bullet  
was designed to deflect attention from the lack of government  
security around her vehicle as she left the park in the city where  
the Pakistani Army keeps its headquarters, and where the powerful  
Inter Services Intelligence agency has a strong presence, Pakistani  
and Western security experts said.

Dr. Mohammad Mussadiq Khan, the principal professor of surgery at the  
hospital, said on the night of her death that Ms. Bhutto had died of  
a bullet wound, according to the account of Athar Minallah, the board  
member of the Rawalpindi General Hospital.

Mr. Minallah released the medical report written by Dr. Khan and six  
other doctors together with an open letter supporting the doctors in  
their call for an autopsy.

The report did not mention a bullet because the actual cause of the  
head injury was left to the autopsy required under Pakistani law when  
a person dies under suspicious or criminal circumstances, Mr.  
Minallah said.

The report said the doctors had tried for 41 minutes to revive her.  
It said “the patient was pulseless and was not breathing” when she  
arrived at the hospital.

“A wound was present on the right temporoparietal region through  
which blood was trickling down, and whitish material which looked  
like brain matter was visible in the wound,” it said.

Although Mr. Cheema, the government spokesman, insisted that Ms.  
Bhutto did not die of a bullet wound, he also insisted that Baitullah  
Mehsud, a Pakistani militant linked to Al Qaeda, was responsible for  
her death. In short, his contention at his briefings was this: a  
gunman fired, but missed; a suicide bomber from Mr. Mehsud’s group  
then blew himself up, and as Ms. Bhutto ducked from the attack, she  
hit her head on a lever on the sunroof of her car.

An account of Ms. Bhutto’s death that did not involve a gunshot wound  
was the optimal explanation for the government, said Bruce Riedel, an  
expert on Pakistan at the Brookings Institution in Washington, and a  
former member of the National Security Council in the Clinton  
administration.

“If there is a gunshot wound the security was abysmal,” Ms. Riedel  
said. The government did not want to be exposed on its careless  
security approach, he said.

As the government’s explanation raised questions, new images of the  
gunman, dressed in a sleeveless black waistcoat and wearing rimless  
sunglasses, were splashed across the front pages of Pakistan’s Sunday  
papers.

The man with the gun who is seen opening fire on Ms. Bhutto just a  
few meters from her wore a short haircut similar to those of  
plainclothes intelligence officials. He is seen standing in front of  
a man whose head is covered in a shawl in the style of Pashtun men  
from the Pakistani tribal areas where Al Qaeda has strongholds. He is  
described in the newspaper, Dawn, as the suicide bomber who detonated  
a bomb after the shots were fired.

In the open letter that Mr. Minallah distributed along with the  
medical report to the Pakistani news media and to The New York Times,  
Mr. Minallah suggested the doctors felt they were being pressured by  
the government to back the theory that she had died by hitting her  
head on the lever of the car’s sunroof.

But the doctors had stressed to him that “without an autopsy it is  
not at all possible to determine as to what had caused the injury,”  
Mr. Minallah wrote in his open letter.

The chief of police in Rawalpindi, Aziz Saud, “did not agree” to the  
autopsy request by the doctors, Mr. Minallah added.


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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