PPP confirms Musharraf, Elahi not involved in Benazir murder

Ansar Abbasi
ISLAMABAD: Investigations into the Benazir Bhutto murder case have found not even an iota of evidence about the involvement of former Dictator General Musharraf, Pervez Elahi or any other person nominated by the slain PPP leader during her life. No grand conspiracy involving any of the former rulers or the establishment could also be established.

Sources in the PPP said that the Interior Minister Rehman Malik in his recent briefing to party leadership on the matter has put all the blame on al-Qaeda and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan as was claimed by General Musharraf’s regime within days of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.

These sources said that selected leaders in the PPP who were briefed about the outcome of the joint investigations into this high profile murder case, expressed their satisfaction over the probe. It is said that even some of those PPP leaders, who have been publicly demanding inclusion of General Musharraf into this murder case, were also satisfied with the interior minister’s report on the murder investigations.

It was, however, decided not to make the report public as the authorities fear that some people, who are under surveillance for their possible connection with the murder case might get alerted.

More than three years after the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the present government’s investigations have concluded what Musharraf regime had announced within a couple of days time of her murder.

The Joint Investigation Team constituted by the PPP government has verified that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), led at the time by Baitullah Mehsud, carried out the attack that killed Bhutto. Within a few days time of the murder, the then Interior Ministry official Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema had blamed Baitullah Mehsud as being the mastermind of BB’s murder.

Cheema had also played the recorded conversation between a man identified as “Maulvi sahib” and “Ameer sahib” (Baituallah Mehsud). That discussion of the assassination was intercepted by the Inter Services Intelligence shortly after Bhutto’s assassination and was made public. Ameer sahib was identified as Baitullah Mehsud by one of the arrested men.

The News senior crime reporter Shakeel Anjum recently, before the last CEC meeting of the PPP, had revealed what the investigation report contained. It was declared in The News report that Abu Ubaid al-Misry was found the planner of the assassination plot of Benazir Bhutto while the plot was alleged to have been executed by Baitullah Mehsud through his men.

The report disclosed that a powerful satellite mobile phone system ‘Thoraya’ was provided to the key players of the assassination plot and the sets were provided from Dubai, adding that the connectivity of the system was so strong that its signals could be received under water.

The investigators have monitored the movement of the perpetrators and executors of the plan involved in the assassination through geo-fencing technology to scientifically prove their involvement. The report confirmed that Rafaqat, Husnain Gul, Ikramullah, Aitzaz Shah, Rasheed Turabi and Sher Zaman were involved in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and they were directly linked to Abu Ubaid Misry and Baitullah Mehsud.

According to the report three key suspects, directly involved in the assassination plan, are still at large. The withholding of the report from making it public, is said to be connected with the missing suspects who have been identified but not yet arrested.

Hasnain Gul, who was arrested on January 5, 2008, had confessed that the two suicide bombers had stayed at his house a day before the assassination. The suicide bombers left a shawl, a cap and a pair of joggers at Hasnain’s residence. On Sept 12, 2009, some 20 months after the assassination, these articles of clothing were sent to the FBI Laboratory in Quantico for DNA analysis. The FBI report was then compared to the DNA obtained from body parts of the suicide bombers recovered from Liaquat Bagh. The two samples matched corroborated Gul’s confession and firmly linked the two suicide bombers with Mehsud’s network.