Everyone want to kill Benazir Bhutto

Sphere: Related Content

Finally Benazir Bhutto was laid in peace on Friday evening in her ancestral hometown of Larkana. Her grave was surrounded by thousands of anguished supporters to pay their respects to the Benazir Bhutto. While her family and party stayed silent, President Pervez Musharraf rushed to defuse the nationwide anger.

Doctors who treated Bhutto held a press conference to to clarify that her death had been caused by bullets or shrapnel from the suicide bombing. There were no wounds on her neck and no exit wound in her head claim by one of the doctors. Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Cheema showed video footage of a beaming Bhutto seconds before she was killed, along with photographs of her blood-stained vehicle. He said Bhutto died when her head struck the sunroof doors of her customized SUV. "Three bullets were fired but missed her," he said. "She was ducking or was thrown by the shockwaves from the explosion, and her head struck one of the levers of the sunroof."

Bhutto had appeared through the sunroof of her armored SUV to wave at supporters at the end of her election rally in Pakistan's military capital, Rawalpindi. The government's finding contradicts eyewitness accounts by Bhutto's aides, who said that two bullets struck Bhutto in the head and neck before the assassin detonated himself.

"We provided excellent security to Ms. Bhutto, but our expert advice was ignored by her," Cheema told reporters. Cheema blamed militant tribal leader Baitullah Mehsud for the Oct. 18 suicide attacks on Bhutto's homecoming procession (which Mehsud has denied) and for Bhutto's assassination. "Look, it is horrible, but everyone wanted to kill her," Cheema said. He read what he said was the transcript of a purported phone call that took place late Dec. 27 between Mehsud and a Waziristan-based cleric. According to the transcript, without referring specifically to Bhutto or her murder, Mehsud and the cleric congratulate each other. The cleric then names two "brave boys" who "did the work," and Mehsud and the cleric work out, in surprising detail, a future meeting in Waziristan. "It's been so long, we must meet," says Mehsud, according to the transcript presented by the government.

Bhutto is now buried alongside her father, another former prime minister, who was hanged 28 years ago on the orders of military dictator Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. In death, as in life, Bhutto is proving an indomitable adversary.