Challenges Await in Investigating Benazir Bhutto's Death

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Pakistan has decided to allow Scotland Yard to investigate Benazir Bhutto's assassination. This is a good political move given the massive suspicion on the country's streets that Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf was behind her death -- suspicions that Musharraf has fueled through his government's incompetent handling of the aftermath of Bhutto's killing. It seems that Western behind-the-scenes pressure played a role in the invitation that Musharraf extended to Scotland Yard.

An Agence France-Presse report states: "Bhutto's aides who were by her side during the attack say she died from a gunshot to the head. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, refused to allow an autopsy before she was buried, saying 'we know how she died.'" I spoke with an intelligence source about this claim yesterday. He informed me that it's unclear at this point who was responsible for Bhutto's quick burial, but he was initially told that Musharraf's people insisted that the body be buried as soon as possible. After this decision was criticized, Musharraf claimed that Zardari was the one who refused to allow an autopsy. To determine who really made this call, Scotland Yard's investigators will have to sit down independently with the doctors who are knowledgeable about the decision. My gut tells me that Musharraf made the decision not to allow the autopsy -- but Pakistan being what it is, it's always best to keep an open mind.

Another problem that Scotland Yard will face in its investigation is that, from an investigative perspective, the Pakistanis contaminated the crime scene by hosing it down almost immediately, long before Scotland Yard was even authorized to go to Pakistan. My intelligence sources suspect that Musharraf ordered a cover-up -- not because he was involved in Bhutto's killing, but most likely because he does not want militant infiltration of the security services to be a topic of public discussion.

There are currently multiple theories within the U.S. intelligence community about Bhutto's death. Eli Lake's report about the theory that an entire Pakistani commando unit had been suborned (which I blogged about here) was factually correct -- that is, this was a leading theory at the time that he reported it. However, as more facts have come to light, it is no longer a leading theory: as I wrote on December 28, "early reports about situations such as the Bhutto assassination are, in general, unreliable." My intelligence sources tell me that it's still unclear if snipers were involved in Bhutto's killing. Early press reports discussed sniper fire, but it is possible that sources reporting it were simply confused. The video that has been released of gunmen firing at Bhutto does not clarify whether those gunmen actually managed to hit her.

At this point there are still more questions than answers. Hopefully Scotland Yard's investigation will help to clarify matters -- although the investigators will face some serious barriers to doing so.

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