Scotland Yard investigators have concluded that former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto died as a result of a bomb blast, not a gunshot, in a Dec. 27 suicide attack, supporting the Pakistani government's version of how she was killed.
Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party immediately rejected the British findings yesterday and repeated its demand for a UN investigation.
The party says Bhutto was shot and suspects a government cover-up because Bhutto had accused political allies of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf of plotting to kill her.
The death of the two-time prime minister sparked violent unrest across the country and forced a six-week delay in parliamentary elections, now set for Feb. 18. The continuing dispute over exactly how she died will do little to ease Pakistan's political turmoil.
Musharraf has rejected the call for a UN probe but invited Scotland Yard to help establish the cause of death. After a two-and-a-half week investigation, its findings were released yesterday in a summarized report issued by the British High Commission in Islamabad.
British Home Office pathologist Nathaniel Cary was quoted in a report as saying that, "the only tenable cause" for the former prime minister's fatal head injury was the impact of the blast that went off as she waved to supporters from the hatch of her vehicle after addressing an election rally.
"In my opinion Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto died as a result of a severe head injury sustained as a consequence of the bomb-blast and due to head impact somewhere in the escape hatch of the vehicle," Cary said in the report.
The Pakistani government announced a similar conclusion shortly after Bhutto's killing, which took place in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. It says the attack was orchestrated by a top Taliban militant commander with links to al-Qaeda, Baitullah Mehsud.
There was widespread public skepticism over the government's conclusion as the bomb site was hosed down within hours of the attack and the findings were announced with haste.
"We disagree with the finding on the cause of the death," said Sherry Rehman, spokeswoman for the Pakistan People's Party, who escorted Bhutto to the hospital after the attack.
"She died from a bullet injury, this was and is our position," Rehman said.
The Scotland Yard report said that despite the lack of a detailed search of the crime scene or autopsy of Bhutto's body "the evidence that is available is sufficient for reliable conclusions to be drawn."
Investigators had relied considerably on X-rays and detailed examination of video footage of the attack, it said.
The Scotland Yard report found that there had been a single attacker and that the man who had fired the shots at close range toward Bhutto had also blown himself up. There had been earlier suggestions that a separate bomber had lurked behind the gunman.
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