KARACHI, Pakistan, Dec. 30 -- Pakistan's largest and most storied political party chose Sunday to continue its dynastic traditions, anointing the 19-year-old son of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto to be her ultimate successor but picking her husband to lead for now.
The selections mean that the Pakistan People's Party, which casts itself as the voice of democracy in Pakistan, will stay in family hands for a third generation.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who had largely been shielded from the spotlight by his mother and has not lived in Pakistan since he was a young boy, will lead the party when he finishes his studies at Oxford University.
Speaking briefly but forcefully at a news conference in the Bhutto family's ancestral home, he said he would strive to honor his mother's legacy. "The party's long and historic struggle will continue with renewed vigor," he said. "My mother always said democracy is the best revenge."
Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, whose reputation has long been tainted by corruption charges, will run the party for at least the next several years. He said Sunday that the succession strategy reflected the wishes of his wife, who died in a gun-and-bomb attack at a rally Thursday afternoon.
The party's new leaders -- neither of whom had been a major player in Pakistani politics -- take over at an especially turbulent time for the country, with elections on the horizon and President Pervez Musharraf clinging to power amid widespread unrest.
Asif Zardari quickly announced that the party will compete in the parliamentary vote scheduled for Jan. 8. Another opposition party, led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, indicated it will do the same.
But Musharraf allies strongly hinted that the election would be postponed, possibly for months. "Delaying the election is very much in the cards," said Tariq Azim Khan, information secretary for the major pro-Musharraf party. "If you ask me personally if I would go ahead, I would say it would be unfair to go out and campaign in these sad times."
Although the Bush administration pressed Pakistani leaders last week to keep to the election schedule, the State Department said Sunday that it had no objections to a slight postponement.
"If the people on the ground think this is not the time for an election, that is fine," said spokesman Robert McInturff. "But we would want to see an alternative date. We do not want to see an indefinite delay."
Bhutto's killing Thursday was followed by unrest across the country, as rioting broke out in major cities as well as small villages. The atmosphere remained tense Sunday, with army deployments in several key areas, but the violence eased. Still, Bhutto's legions of supporters continued to blame Musharraf for her death.
Zardari called Sunday for the United Nations to lead an international inquiry into his wife's killing, while conceding that he had declined to give Pakistani officials permission to conduct an autopsy. "Their forensic reports are useless," he said angrily, calling the suggestion of an autopsy "an insult to my wife, to the sister of the nation, to the mother of the nation."
The Bhuttos are often compared to the Kennedys because of their tendency toward charismatic leaders who meet tragic ends. Benazir Bhutto's father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, himself a former prime minister, was hanged in 1979 by the military dictator who overthrew him. Her two brothers died in mysterious and violent circumstances.
The young man representing the newest generation of Bhuttos -- who added the famous name for the first time Sunday -- indicated he is acutely aware of that record, saying the chairmanship of the Pakistan People's Party is a position "that often is occupied by martyrs."
Nonetheless, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said he planned to return to Pakistan after he graduates from Oxford "to lead the party as my mother wanted me to."
Asif Zardari, meanwhile, left no doubt Sunday that he will be in charge in the interim. He pointedly asked reporters not to address questions to his son, and he lashed out at Musharraf's allies, calling them "the killer party."
Zardari, who wed Benazir Bhutto in an arranged marriage in 1987, is a controversial choice to lead the party, and some insiders worry it could fracture. During his wife's two terms as prime minister in the late 1980s and 1990s, he was known as "Mr. 10 Percent" for his reputation for taking money off the top of government deals. He served an extended jail sentence under Musharraf that stemmed from the alleged corruption.
"Zardari is not very much liked in the party. He goes for big hotels, world's best addresses. He wants to live like a prince abroad," said Rafiq Safi, a longtime party activist.
Zardari also has many critics in Western capitals, including Washington, which could further complicate U.S. hopes that Musharraf and the PPP might form a coalition that would unify moderate forces in Pakistan against extremism. "The U.S. is not going to be excited about working with Zardari," said Daniel Markey, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
But the pressure to keep the party's leadership in family hands was intense, reflecting the unorthodox nature of the PPP as a party for the impoverished masses that is largely run by a collection of wealthy landlords -- the Bhutto family being by far the most prominent.
For true believers in the magic of the Bhutto name, people who are not members of the clan are ineligible to lead. Even Zardari is viewed with suspicion because he came to the family through marriage, not blood.
"There's something wrong with the region," said former party official Makhdoom Khaleeq Zaman, referring to the South Asian tendency for political dynasties. "It's not very democratic."
While Benazir Bhutto was groomed to lead the party by her father, it is unclear whether her son went through the same training.
His birth in 1988 -- on the eve of elections that Bhutto won, making her the first female prime minister of a Muslim nation -- generated headlines around the world. But after that, she took great pains to guard his privacy. He largely grew up in exile in London and Dubai, and little is known about him outside the family.
In her autobiography, Bhutto described the birth of her first child, calling him "the most celebrated and politically controversial baby in the history of Pakistan."
"There were congratulatory gunshots being fired outside the hospital, the beating of drums" and cries of "Long live Bhutto," she wrote.
On Sunday, when Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was reintroduced to the world, dozens of emotional party activists repeated that cheer and added a new one: "Bilawal, move forward! We are with you."
* Article from washingtonpost.com
Missing Evidence from Bhutto's Murder
With rumors of government complicity in Benazir Bhutto's assassination rife throughout Pakistan, the country's stability may depend on the absolute transparency of the investigation into the murder. But a constantly evolving and sometimes contradictory explanation of the events by Pakistani investigators has only clouded the issue. Meanwhile, her husband and her supporters are asking for a United Nations-led inquiry into her death, something Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is unlikely to accede to. But even if Musharraf were to agree, there is very little for international forensics experts to investigate.
Within hours of the attack in the garrison town of Rawalpindi some 10 miles from the capital, authorities had already hosed do
wn the streets. Pools of blood, along with possible evidence such as bullet casings, DNA samples from the bomber and tracks had been washed away. Retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, the former director general of Pakistani Intelligence, said he was shocked to see people cleaning up the debris so soon after the assassination. "It's a crime scene, and they're washing away all the evidence! We need to be asking why the hell was this thing done." One of the few pieces of evidence from the crime scene that remains is amateur footage showing a clean-cut man in a black vest brandishing what appears to be a gun. Behind him stands another man, a white scarf wrapped around his head. It is thought that he might have been the suicide bomber.The situation had already been muddied by contradictory versions of how Bhutto died. Initial health official reports stated that Bhutto had been shot twice before a suicide bomber detonated himself seconds later. But by Saturday, the government reversed track. Bhutto had been shot at, said Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema, but the shooter missed. The force of the explosion knocked Bhutto, who had been waving at the crowds from her vehicle's sunroof, backwards. She hit her head on a protruding lever, and succumbed to the fractures to her skull. Cheema presented X rays to support his claim, but witnesses and close friends who rushed Bhutto to the hospital say that there was no doubt she had been shot.
Doctors who had attended Bhutto immediately after the attack initially said that she died of gunshot wounds, but over the weekend they released new findings in line with the Interior Ministry's claim that the official cause of death was head wounds sustained when Bhutto fell. The reversal has many people suspecting government interference. Says Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, an opposition member of the National Assembly and a former petroleum minister: "The government says it was the work of terrorists and they say someone has claimed responsibility. What I don't understand is why they keep changing the story of how Bhutto died? Why do that? These summersaults make everything look suspicious."
Khan says he is naturally skeptical of talk that the government could be behind the assassination but says that their inept handling of the investigation only adds to the rumors. The idea that Bhutto died when her head hit a lever as she was pushed down into her open top car is "ridiculous." He also says that the government is not serious in investigating incidents like last week's. "How come, at least in the last three years, there have been scores and scores if not hundreds of bomb blasts and suicide attacks in Pakistan and the only incidents that resulted in people being arrested and sentenced is in the two attacks on Pervez Musharraf?"
An autopsy would have been the obvious solution to the ongoing debate, but Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zadari declined one at the time of her death, explaining at a news conference on Sunday that, "It was an insult to my wife, an insult to the mother of the nation. I know their forensic reports are useless. I refuse to give them her last remains." The government has since offered to exhume the body, which was buried Friday, in order to perform a post-mortem — but it may be a case of too little, too late. Doing so now only risks inflaming tensions. Islamic traditions hold that the body is sacred, and must not be disturbed in death. As expected, Bhutto's family declined the offer.
As for who plotted the assassination, that too is clouded by what many see as either government incompetence or a knee-jerk choice of "usual suspects." On Friday, the Interior Ministery claimed that investigators had intercepted a telephone call that proved that Baitullah Mehsud, a leader of the Pakistani Taliban thought to be affiliated with al-Qaeda, had instigated the attack. Ministry spokesman Cheema released a transcript of a purported conversation between Mehsud and a follower, offering congratulations for a job well done.
But Bhutto supporters are skeptical of the reports' veracity. "We do not know if it is a genuine transcript or one created by the intelligence agencies," says PPP party spokesman Farhatullah Babar. Mehsud has become a convenient scapegoat in recent terrorist attacks, sometimes standing in when investigators turn up empty-handed. Speaking through his spokesman to the BBC, Mehsud denied any involvement in the attack, as he did when he was accused in the October 18 suicide bombing at a Bhutto rally in Karachi that killed some 140. Such denials, of course, are meaningless, but they do exacerbate rumors of government complicity, a situation that benefits an anti-government insurgency. "There is a very strong possibility that the intelligence agencies were behind the attack," Mehsud's spokesman told the BBC.
The government pirouettes may have less to do with a possible cover-up of an Administration-led assassination than a poorly executed attempt at damage control. If Bhutto was killed in a deliberate attack by a sniper, the government would have much more to answer for than if she was the victim of an arguably less-focused terrorist bombing. Bhutto has been dogged by terrorist threats since she returned to Pakistan on October 18; attending a rally and waving to crowds from the sunroof of her car was clearly a risky undertaking. And the government can argue that providing security under such conditions is impossible. "Look at our country," says Abdul Sattar, a former foreign minister under Musharraf. "Ask whether anyone could get security. I do not know while moving on a street with the supporters lining up along the side, front and rear, whether our security authorities have the capabilities to have a wall of security around the car."
Bhutto's supporters have demanded an international, independent investigation into the events leading to her death. California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said that Washington needed to answer some "troubling questions" about Pakistan's investigation so far. At yesterday's press conference, Bhutto's husband Zadari demanded a United Nations investigation, saying "We want a [assassinated Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik] Hariri commission-style investigation... we are writing to the United Nations for an international probe into her martyrdom." According to Dawn, a local newspaper Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said that he would "consider" outside help during a phone call with British PM Gordon Brown yesterday, which many are interpreting as a "thanks, but no thanks" dismissal.
And then there is the cynical view. In some ways, the lack of a definitive answer suits all sides. The government can maintain its story that an al-Qaeda suicide bomb plot killed Bhutto, thus exonerating itself from negligence at best and complicity at worst. Meanwhile the PPP can leverage the insinuation of government culpability to keep Bhutto's death relevant as Pakistan prepares for the elections she died campaigning for.
* Article from time.com
Bhutto Inquiry Seen as 'Simply bizarre'
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - As calls for an international investigation into the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto increase, new details are emerging that suggest that the truth behind her death will be very difficult to uncover.
Within an hour of the attack that killed Bhutto on Thursday, the crime scene in Rawalpindi was cordoned off but washed down with fire hoses. A newly broadcast video of the attack directly contradicts the government's account of Bhutto's death, which was released about 26 hours after she was killed. No autopsy was performed, though the procedure is required in such controversial cases. Witnesses from her political party say they still have not been interviewed. Also, the doctors who tried to revive her are all in hiding.
Athar Minallah, a senior lawyer and board member of the medical group that includes Rawalpindi General Hospital, met with the doctors Saturday. He said they told him they had asked Rawalpindi police to arrange for experts to conduct a post-mortem examination but were rebuffed. Minallah said the doctors were forced to submit their clinical notes as the final report on Bhutto's death.
"Benazir's killing wasn't as shocking as is the manner in which the whole matter is being handled," Minallah said. "It is simply bizarre. It's unbelievable. I don't have the words."
The dispute over the government's investigation appears to be turning people against an already unpopular President Pervez Musharraf, who has appealed for calm. Musharaff, a U.S. ally in the war on terrorism, is at the shakiest part of his presidency since seizing power in 1999, and is facing calls from all sides to step down. The government is expected to announce Tuesday that next week's parliamentary elections will be delayed several weeks because of the strife.
There have been growing calls by members of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party and even U.S. politicians for an outside investigation into Bhutto's death -- along the lines of the UN probe into the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
When Bhutto's homecoming procession was attacked in Karachi by suicide blasts in the early hours of Oct. 19, the government refused her request for outside investigators. Police did not even cordon off the crime scene. Journalists and curious party workers walked wherever they wanted, even onto the truck where Bhutto had been standing, where pieces of flesh and shrapnel remained. Cooperative police even showed off the head of one supposed suicide bomber.
Zulfiqar Ali Mirza, a party member, was in charge of security for the homecoming event, to celebrate the return of Bhutto from eight years of self-imposed exile. He said he met with police and government officials before and after the attack to discuss threats. "Nobody took me seriously," he said. "They just used to laugh it away."
The investigation into the October attack that killed 140 people has turned up nothing.
Party members said they had repeatedly asked for more security for Bhutto.
"Every day, every week we were sending letters to the Ministry of Interior, saying security should be beefed up," said Aman Ullah, a retired army brigadier who had been one of her closest aides for 11 years. "Nothing was done."
Bhutto, 54, a moderate, outspoken two-time prime minister considered to be the country's main opposition leader, had many enemies. Militants did not like her support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism and her liberal views. And some of the old guard from the "agencies" -- the three spy agencies that seem omnipresent in Pakistan -- simply hated her.
In interviews, she always said if she were killed, Islamic militants were not ultimately at fault. She said the blame would fall on someone in Musharraf's government or rogue people in the spy agencies.
Bhutto was killed Thursday after a campaign rally in Rawalpindi, an army garrison town where many agency men work. As she was leaving the rally in a white bulletproof LandCruiser, she poked her head out of the sunroof to wave at supporters. At least three gunshots were fired, and Bhutto dropped from view. Then a bomb exploded, killing at least 20 supporters.
At first, the state-run news agency quoted an unnamed official saying that Bhutto was killed by a bullet, just before the blast. Witnesses in the car with Bhutto said she was shot in the neck.
By Friday evening, only a few hours after Bhutto was buried next to her father, the Interior Ministry announced that the case was solved. Officials blamed Baitullah Mehsud, a leader of the Pakistani Taliban, who hides out in the country's lawless tribal areas, quoting a bugged telephone conversation that Mehsud allegedly had. Mehsud has denied the charge.
Officials also said that Bhutto had not been killed by a bullet but because she ducked when the bullets were fired, and that the blast forced her head against a sunroof lever.
The claims were immediately labeled preposterous by the people who had been with her, and a newly released video, obtained by Britain's Channel 4 television, added to public doubts. It showed a clean-cut man firing a pistol at Bhutto from a few feet away. Her hair and head scarf moved upward, and she collapsed into the vehicle. Only then did the bomb, reportedly detonated by a second man, explode.
Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, said the video "denied" the government's account of his wife's death. "It just proves they've just been trying to muddy the water from the first day," he told CNN.
Several investigative missteps have contributed to skepticism about the government's conclusions. For example, journalists who were there said the crime scene was hosed down an hour after the blast.
Afzal Shigri, the former director general of the National Police Bureau and former inspector general of Sindh province, said he would have kept the crime scene sealed off for at least two days, to prevent even a small piece of evidence being lost.
"This was a very high-profile case," Shigri said. "You should not only follow the book but go the extra mile."
He also said the government made a mistake by announcing that the crime had been solved so soon.
Ullah said police have not yet interviewed party members who were with Bhutto. "Not yet," he said. "What a shame. So many days, and they haven't contacted anyone. I don't think they've even started the investigation yet."
Why no autopsy?
But most of the controversy over the initial investigation has centered on why there was no autopsy, which could have determined how Bhutto died.
The government said it respected the wishes of Bhutto's husband, who did not want an autopsy.
On Sunday night, Zardari said he rejected the autopsy request because he did not trust the government. "It was an insult to my wife, to the sister of the nation, to the mother of the nation," he said.
But by law, the government is supposed to override family wishes, especially if doctors request an autopsy, said two lawyers, three former high-level judges and a retired police official.
"If there is a doubt, we would ask for an autopsy," Shigri said.
Minallah, the lawyer, said doctors asked the Rawalpindi Police Chief Saud Aziz to grant an autopsy but he refused. Aziz was quoted by The Associated Press as saying an autopsy depends on family wishes.
On Monday, Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said Bhutto's family would have the right to exhume her body for an autopsy.
The government has stood behind its investigation, even though the final medical report on Bhutto's death is vague and inconclusive. The seven doctors who signed it are surgeons, an anesthesiologist, a radiologist, a resident and administrators. They are not pathologists -- experts in determining the cause of death. Minallah said the report is simply clinical notes.
Their report, titled "Medical Report of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto," describes how Bhutto was brought to Rawalpindi General Hospital at 5:35 p.m. Thursday with a wound on the right side of her head. The report then describes how doctors tried to revive her but declared her dead at 6:16 p.m. The wound was described: "Edges were irregular. No surrounding wounds or blackening was seen." But "wound was not further explored. Gentle aseptic dressing was used to cover the wound."
The report finished by saying the cause of death was "open head injury with depressed skull fracture, leading to Cardiopulmonary arrest."
Minallah said doctors had authorized him to speak for them.
"They were forced to submit even this report," Minallah said. "This is not a medical-legal report. These are the clinical notes of a doctor attending to a patient. A medical-legal report explains as to what is the cause of the injury -- whether it is a bullet, whether there are gunpowder traces, material in the wound. That is only possible after an autopsy is carried out."
* Article from chicagotribune.com
Account of Bhutto's Death Retracted
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistani government has backed off earlier claims that opposition leader Benazir Bhutto died not from a bullet but because the force from a suicide blast forced her head into a sunroof crank, crushing her skull.
After increasing public uproar over the government investigation, the Interior Ministry issued a statement Tuesday saying there was "no intention to conceal anything from the people of Pakistan."
Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz on Monday even asked people and the media to forgive and ignore the comment made Friday night about the sunroof by Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema.
Cheema told CNN he based his statement about the sunroof lever "on the initial investigations and the reports by the medical doctors" who treated Bhutto. He said the ministry would wait for forensic investigators to finish their report before making any more conclusions about her cause of death.
"I was just narrating the facts, you know, and nothing less, nothing more," he said Tuesday.
But the medical report—criticized by many as unprofessional and simply clinical notes—said nothing about a sunroof or a latch. There was no autopsy to determine what actually killed Bhutto. Doctors have complained that their statements have been misrepresented by the government and have gone into hiding, said Athar Minallah, a top lawyer whom the doctors asked for help. The doctors asked police to authorize an autopsy despite the wishes of Bhutto's husband, but the police refused, Minallah said.
Mistakes in the government investigation have increased public anger and undermined any credibility it might have.
The scene of the attack on Bhutto—a gunman fired three shots at her after a campaign rally in Rawalpindi, followed by a suicide blast—was hosed down within an hour. Witnesses still have not been interviewed. The Islamic militant blamed for staging the attack denies having any role, and the transcript of the phone conversation in which he claims responsibility seems questionable, police experts said.
Despite declaring earlier that no foreign assistance was needed, government officials are expected to announce soon that outside investigators have been invited to help.
Although leaders from Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party had wanted a UN investigation, the Pakistani government has ruled that out, sources said. Investigators from Britain's Scotland Yard will most likely be asked to play a significant role.
* Article from chicagotribune.com
Sources: Bhutto was to Give U.S. Lawmakers Vote-rigging Report
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- On the day she died, Benazir Bhutto planned to hand over to visiting U.S. lawmakers a report accusing Pakistan's intelligence services of a plot to rig parliamentary elections, sources close to the slain former Pakistani prime minister told CNN Tuesday.
Bhutto was assassinated Thursday, hours before a scheduled meeting with Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-Rhode Island, and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania.
A top Bhutto aide who helped write the report showed a copy to CNN.
"Where an opposing candidate is strong in an area, they [supporters of President Pervez Musharraf ] have planned to create a conflict at the polling station, even killing people if necessary, to stop polls at least three to four hours," the document says.
The report also accused the government of planning to tamper with ballots and voter lists, intimidate opposition candidates and misuse U.S.-made equipment to monitor communications of opponents.
"Ninety percent of the equipment that the USA gave the government of Pakistan to fight terrorism is being used to monitor and to keep a check on their political opponents," the report says.
The Pakistani government denied the allegations, with two Pakistani diplomatic sources calling the report "baseless." Rashid Qureshi, a spokesman for Musharraf, called the accusations "ridiculous" and said the election will be "free, fair and transparent."
"I think they are just a pack of lies," he said.
One Bhutto source said the document was compiled at her request and said the information came from sources inside the police and intelligence services.
The election had been scheduled for January 8, but in the wake of Bhutto's assassination, the Election Commission is expected to announce Wednesday that it will delay the vote at least four weeks into February, sources at the commission said.
Sen. Latif Khosa, who helped put the report together, accused the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence of operating a rigging cell from a safe house in the capital, Islamabad. The goal, he said, is to change voting results electronically on election day.
"The ISI has set up a mega-computer system where they can hack any computer in Pakistan and connect with the Election Commission," he said.
Media outlets in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh have run reports alleging that retired Brig. Gen. Ejaz Shah -- formerly an Inter-Services Intelligence officer and now head of the civilian Intelligence Bureau -- is involved in the vote rigging plans.
Shah's name also turned up in a letter Bhutto wrote to Musharraf after the first attempt on her life on October 18, when she returned to Pakistan after eight years in exile, Pakistani media reported. In the letter, the media reported, Shah was one of four Pakistani officials Bhutto named as people who wanted her dead.
The Pakistan government has denied those allegations as well.
Khosa said he could make no link between Bhutto's assassination and the report. Some terrorism experts also said there was no reason to believe Bhutto was killed because of the report, agreeing with Pakistani government contentions that al Qaeda was responsible for her death.
* Article from cnn.com
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