Al Qaeda make claim that they don't hit women. In fact, according to their published beliefs they do. According to the known facts, they have.
Bhutto supporters are claiming the assassination was related to government support. This claim is partly based on Bhutto's own statement that her assassination would be from the Pakistan Government. The claim is also based on the assertion that the Pakistan Government is covering up the way Bhutto died, calling it head trauma when her supporters want it to be more directly attributable to a killing method.
Bhutto's allegation regarding the reason for her assassination was made as a political statement from an opposition leader. It is possible that it is a conspiracy, but hardly likely, given the nature of her extremist opponents. The terrible irony is that the organization Bhutto supported as Prime Minister, the Taliban, may well have been behind her assassination.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Bhutto Supporters Angrily Reject Government Claim
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Pakistan tense amid Benazir Bhutto death dispute
By Nasir Jaffry
PAKISTAN is gripped by division and uncertainty following the burial of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, as her supporters angrily reject a Government explanation of her death.
One day after Ms Bhutto was laid to rest at her family's mausoleum in southern Sindh province, the authorities used force to stem violence which has left at least 33 people dead in the nuclear-armed nation since her killing.
The army has deployed 16,000 troops in areas of her Sindh stronghold while paramilitary forces in the southern port of Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, have been given authority to shoot on sight.
As the United States and other Western nations pressured Pakistan to go ahead with general elections on January 8, a bitter dispute was erupting over how the former premier died and who was to blame.
Ms Bhutto died on Thursday shortly after a suicide attack targetting her vehicle at a campaign rally in the northern city of Rawalpindi. Early reports said she had been shot before a bomb exploded nearby.
However the interior ministry said late Friday she had no gunshot or shrapnel wounds. It said she died after smashing her head on her car's sunroof as she tried to duck.
Interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema said Ms Bhutto would have survived the latest assassination attempt if she had stayed inside the car and not had put her head above the sunroof.
He also blamed al-Qaeda, saying intelligence services had intercepted a call from Baitullah Mehsud, considered the extremist group's top leader for Pakistan, congratulating a militant for Ms Bhutto's death.
However Ms Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party rejected the Government's findings as a "pack of lies", and said two party officials were inside Ms Bhutto's vehicle during the attack and saw what happened.
"Two bullets hit her, one in the abdomen and one in the head," Farooq Naik, Ms Bhutto's lawyer and a senior PPP official said.
"It is an irreparable loss and they are turning it into a joke with such claims," he said, warning that the country could be heading towards civil war.
'Dangerous cover-up'
A close aide to Benazir Bhutto says she saw a bullet wound in the Pakistani opposition leader's head when she bathed her body after her assassination.
Ms Bhutto's spokeswoman Sherry Rehman, who said she was in the former prime minister's motorcade at the time of the gun and suicide attack on Thursday, rejected Government claims that the death was caused when Ms Bhutto's head hit her sunroof.
"I was actually part of the party which bathed her body before the funeral," said Ms Rehman, who added that her car was used to transport Ms Bhutto to hospital.
"There was a bullet wound I saw that went in from the back of her head and came out the other side.
"We could not even wash her properly because the wound was still seeping. She lost a huge amount of blood,'' she said.
Ms Rehman accused the Government of mounting a cover-up over Ms Bhutto's death.
"The hospital was made to change its statement. They never gave a proper report," she said.
"I believe the interior ministry is saying that she died from some concussion that may have taken place against the sunroof.
"This is ridiculous, dangerous nonsense because it is a cover-up of what actually happened."
Ms Bhutto was an outspoken critic of al-Qaeda-linked militants blamed for scores of bombings in Pakistan and had received death threats.
But she had also accused elements from the intelligence services of involvement in a suicide attack on a rally in October that left 139 dead and which she only narrowly escaped.
'Heading for anarchy'
Analysts warned that Pakistan was facing the biggest crisis since Bangladesh split off from the country more than 35 years ago, and that President Pervez Musharraf's credibility was hanging by a thread.
"We are heading towards a very uncertain phase of politics which has the potential to plunge the country into a state of anarchy," Hasan Askari, former head of political science at Lahore's Punjab University, said.
Among the incidents, police said, six people burnt to death in a leather factory in Karachi when a mob set it ablaze.
On the second day of official mourning for the slain opposition leader, most people were unable to buy food or petrol, with all shops, service stations, banks and offices closed down.
The streets of the country's big cities - Karachi, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore and Peshawar - were largely empty, and in many places there was evidence of the unrest that has left more than 30 dead since Bhutto's killing.
Burnt-out cars littered the streets in the southern town of Larkana, a Bhutto stronghold where groups of her supporters were roaming the streets shouting slogans against President Pervez Musharraf.
The situation was tense in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city and the economic hub of the nation of 160 million people, with a heavy army and paramilitary presence on the streets.
Few people dared to venture outside and even the country's largest private charity, the Edhi Foundation, said its ambulances had been wrecked by vandals.
"They've smashed up our ambulances," said an Edhi Foundation official in Karachi.
"And we don't have any fuel."
With the petrol shortage, the unrest and the official mourning period which lasts until Monday, most people were unable or unwilling to move about.
Buses were not running, few taxi drivers were working and the roads were dotted with vehicles left behind when they ran out of petrol.
The scale of the unrest has paralysed Pakistan, setting off alarm bells around the world and raising serious doubts about whether the parliamentary elections aimed at ending eight years of military rule can take place.
Pakistan's other leading opposition figure, Nawaz Sharif, has already pulled his party out of the elections, saying they would "destroy the country" if they went ahead.
The assassination has also thrust security concerns and foreign policy back into the US political spotlight less than a week before Americans start voting to decide their Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.
Leading democratic candidate Hillary Clinton called for an independent, international probe into Ms Bhutto's murder, saying President Musharraf's government had no credibility.
"I think it's critically important that we get answers and really those are due first and foremost to the people of Pakistan," Ms Clinton said.
Hundreds of thousands of grief-stricken mourners followed Ms Bhutto's coffin on the final journey to the Bhutto family's mausoleum in the village of Ghari Khuda Bakhsh on Friday.
Her husband Asif Zardari wept as the coffin with the body of the 54-year-old opposition leader was lowered into the tomb where she will lie next to her father, former premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who was hanged by the military government in 1979.
Benazir Bhutto, who was educated at Harvard and Oxford, first took the helm of Pakistan in 1988.
She was ousted in 1990 amid corruption allegations but was premier again from 1993 to 1996.
Al-Qaeda denies Bhutto killing
from news.com.au
AL-QAEDA linked Pakistani militant Baitullah Mehsud was not involved in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, his spokesman said.
"He had no involvement in this attack," Mehsud's spokesman Maulvi Omar said by telephone from an undisclosed location.
"This is a conspiracy of the Government, army and intelligence agencies," he said.
"I strongly deny it. Tribal people have their own customs. We don't strike women."
The Pakistan Government has claimed that Mehsud was responsible for Benazir Bhutto's killing as she left an election rally in Rawalpindi on Thursday.
Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said the Government yesterday recorded an "intelligence intercept" in which Mehsud "congratulated his people for carrying out this cowardly act".
Mr Cheema described Mehsud as an "al-Qaeda leader" and said he was also behind the October 18 bombing against Ms Bhutto's homecoming parade through Karachi that killed more than 140 people.
Mehsud is a commander of pro-Taliban forces in the lawless Pakistani tribal region South Waziristan, where al-Qaeda fighters are also active. His forces often attack Pakistani security forces.
He was recently quoted in a Pakistani newspaper as saying he would welcome Ms Bhutto's return from exile with suicide bombers. Mehsud later denied that in statements to local television and newspaper reporters.
Mr Cheema said Mehsud was "behind most of the recent terrorist attacks that have taken place in Pakistan".
Maulvi Omar said the transcript released by the Government, allegedly of a phone call between Mehsud and a militant discussing Bhutto's death after the fact, was a "drama".
He said it would have been "impossible" for militants to get through the security cordon around the campaign rally where she was killed.
"Benazir was not only a leader of Pakistan but also a leader of international fame. We express our deep grief and shock over her death," Maulvi Omar said.
with Reuters
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