Musharraf Government Covering-Up Assassination

As I argued yesterday, the killing of Bhutto benefits Musharraf the most. Many factors point to the Pakistani dictator and his supporters. Now they are claiming that no bullet hit Bhutto but won't even allow an autopsy. Sound suspicious to you too? The Bush White House, the Pakistani government, and the U.S. media are quick to blame al Qaeda. What is the evidence for that? Let's get the facts. Don't allow the truth to be swept under the rug:

Mystery shrouds the death of former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto. In an explosive revelation, Pakistan's Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz on Friday said that Bhutto did not die of bullet wounds.

Nawaz said that Bhutto died from a head injury. At least seven doctors from the Rawalpindi General Hospital – where the leader was rushed immediately after the attack – say there were no bullet marks on Bhutto's body.

The doctors have submitted a report to the Pakistan government in which they say that no post-mortem was performed on Bhutto’s body and they had not received any instructions to perform one.

“The report says she had head injuries – an irregular patch – and the X-ray doesn’t show any bullet in the head. So it was probably the shrapnel or any other thing has struck her in her said. That damaged her brain, causing it to ooze and her death. The report categorically ssyas there’s no wound other than that,” Nawaz told a Pakistani news channel.

Government sources say there will be an investigation to determine why no autopsy was conducted.

This appeared in Raw Story:

Police abandoned their security posts shortly before Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto's assassination Thursday, according to a journalist present at the time, and unanswerable questions remain about the cause of her death, because an autopsy was never performed.

Pakistan's Interior Minister on Friday said that Bhutto was not killed by gunshots, as had been widely reported, and doctors at Rawalpindi General Hospital, where she died, say there were no bullet marks on the former prime minister's body, according to India's IBNLive.com. Furthermore, according to the news agency, there was no formal autopsy performed on Bhutto's body before she was buried Friday.

[...]Perhaps more shockingly, an attendee at the rally where Bhutto was killed says police charged with protecting her "abandoned their posts," leaving just a handful of Bhutto's own bodyguards protecting her.

"Police officers had frisked the 3,000 to 4,000 people attending Thursday's rally when they entered the park, but as the speakers from Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party droned on, the police abandoned many of their posts," wrote Saeed Shah in an essay published by McClatchy News Service. "As she drove out through the gate, her main protection appeared to be her own bodyguards, who wore their usual white T-shirts inscribed: 'Willing to die for Benazir.'"

While some intelligence officials, especially within the US, were quick to finger al Qaeda militants as responsible for Bhutto's death, it remains unclear precisely who was responsible and some speculation has centered on Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, its military or even forces loyal to the current president Pervez Musharraf. Rawalpindi, where Bhutto was killed, is the garrison city that houses the Pakistani military's headquarters.

Similarities to the first attack in October:

More than 170 of her supporters died. Within an hour, the bodies were removed. Soon after, her caravan and all other evidence was hauled away by police cranes. Tellingly, the Musharraf government has mounted no investigation.

The Musharraf propaganda machine called it a suicide attack by Islamic extremists. Bhutto herself believed it was the dirty work of Musharraf’s political allies. The ISI, Pakistan’s infamous security service, is infiltrated by ideologically jihadist elements that support al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists in Pakistan's border provinces. Bhutto had tried as prime minister to eject the ISI from politics, but that “country within a country” managed to overthrow her instead. She was well aware the security services were less than enthusiastic about Benazir Bhutto becoming prime minister a third time.

After the Oct. 18 carnage, Bhutto's People's Party asked the Musharraf government for the kind of security arrangements owed to a former prime minister. "We got no cooperation," says Bhutto's American spokesman, Mark Siegel. "She just kept on without security, she didn't care about the personal danger. She was the bravest person I ever knew."

Bhutto also believed in predestination.

The Musharraf government is again dismissive of the lapse in security by the Army and security services. They allowed a sophisticated assassin to kill her at close range while the crowd was distracted by a suicide bombing -- the same scenario attempted in the November attack.

This is what Bhutto had to say after the first attempt on her life:

In my view, General Musharraf’s ruling party understood that it would be trounced in any free elections and, together with its allies within the intelligence services, contrived to have the Constitution suspended and elections indefinitely postponed. Very conveniently, the assassination attempt against me last month that resulted in the deaths of at least 140 people is being used as the rationale to stop the democratic process by which my party would most likely have swept parliamentary elections. Maybe this explains why the government refuses to allow the F.B.I. and Scotland Yard to assist in a forensic investigation of the bombings.

[...]The United States alone has given the Musharraf government more than $10 billion in aid since 2001. We do not know exactly where or how this money has been spent, but it is clear that it has not brought about the defeat of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, nor succeeded in capturing Osama bin Laden, nor has it broken the opium trade. It certainly has not succeeded in improving the quality of life of the children and families of Pakistan.

[...]It is dangerous to stand up to a military dictatorship, but more dangerous not to. The moment has come for the Western democracies to show us in their actions, and not just in their rhetoric, which side they are on.

Which is it? This sounds like a cover-up to me:

Hundreds of thousands mourned the death of Benazir Bhutto today, as it was claimed that she died from hitting her vehicle's sunroof when she tried to duck after a suicide attack. Pakistan's Interior Ministry said no bullet or shrapnel was found in her body.

Brigadier Javed Cheema, a ministry spokesman, said the opposition leader had died from a head wound she sustained when she smashed against the sunroof's lever as she tried to shelter inside the car.

"The lever struck near her right ear and fractured her skull," Mr Cheema said.

How convenient. Now you have an excuse to cancel elections that threatened your power; killing two birds with one stone. And you just happen intercept an al Qaeda call talking about the assassination. How come you didn't intercept a call before the killing of Bhutto. That is too convenient, and far fetched:

The shooting and suicide bomb attack that killed Miss Bhutto and 20 others has badly damaged President Pervez Musharraf's plans to "restore democracy" in nuclear-armed Pakistan, a key US ally in the war on terrorism.

He has blamed the attack on Islamic militants based near the country's border with Afghanistan, and pledged to "root them out", but an Interior Ministry spokesman today suggested al-Qa'eda may have been responsible.

"Benazir has been on the hit-list of al-Qa'eda," Brigadier Javed Cheema said. "Now there is every possibility that al-Qa'eda is behind this tragic attack to undermine the security of Pakistan."

Later, a ministry spokesman said an al-Qa'eda phone call was intercepted after Miss Bhutto was killed and there was "irrefutable evidence" the group was trying to undermine the country.