LAHORE: Fresh findings by a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) of the Pakistani Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), which was formed by the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party government to investigate the assassination of formemr Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, has generated a new controversy about the exact number of the suicide bombers who had exploded themselves outside the Liaquat Bagh in the garrison town of Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007 to kill Ms bhutto.
The FIA inquiry team was constituted in August 2009 by the Ministry of Interior to carry out parallel investigations into Benazir Bhutto’s murder, shortly after the UN Inquiry Commission had started its probe in July 2009. Although, the FIA investigations endorsed most findings of a controversial inquiry report by a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) of the Punjab Police, which was formed by the Musharraf regime, including the nomination of Commander Baitullah Mehsud as the mastermind of the Bhutto murder plot, it had differed with the police findings pertaining to the number of the suicide bombers who exploded themselves outside the Liaquat Bagh to kill Ms Bhutto.
An earlier investigation into Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, conducted by the Musharraf regime and carried out by a Joint Investigation Team (JIT), headed by the then Additional Inspector General of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Punjab Police Chaudhry Abdul Majeed, had concluded that the shooter and the suicide bomber who targeted Ms Bhutto’s vehicle on December 27 was the same. According to the JIT inquiry report of February 2008, on the basis of which the five Bhutto murder accused were challaned, the bomber who had exploded himself in Rawalpindi after failing to shoot down the PPP chairperson was Saeed alias Bilal, a resident of South Waziristan.
The JIT report had claimed that as per Ms Bhutto’s assassination plan, Saeed alias Bilal was to carry out the suicide attack in case he failed to shoot down Ms Bhutto while Ikramullah was to cover him and detonate himself if Saeed failed in his attempt. “As Saeed alias Bilal failed to hit Ms Bhutto, he blew himself up, killing the PPP leader and 23 others, mostly on the spot,” the JIT report had stated. Even otherwise, the pieces of evidence collected from outside the crime scene by the Punjab Police [before its hosing down]included only one mutilated head of the suspected suicide bomber, both his legs, as well as his hands, on which he had applied Henna.
As per the JIT findings, the partial skull of Saeed alias Bilal, the only suicide bomber who had exploded himself, was recovered a day after the Rawalpindi attack, and that too from atop one of the buildings near the crime site.
However, fresh findings by the JIT of the FIA mention the death of two suicide bombers outside the Liaquat Bagh on December 27. Based on the confessional statement of Hasnain Gul, one of the five accused [who was arrested by police on June 05, 2008], the FIA findings, which were submitted on 26 May 2010 with the Rawalpindi Anti Terrorism Court (ATC), trying the Bhutto murder suspects, stated that two suicide bombers namely Bilal and Ikramullah had stayed at the residence of arrested co-accused Muhammad Rafaqat on December 26, 2007. And both were killed in the suicide attack outside the Liaquat Bagh on December 27 while targeting the PPP chairperson.
The FIA’s inquiry report is also in contravention with the Scotland Yard’s 8 February 2008 probe report, which had concluded that the gunman and the suicide bomber who had targeted Ms Bhutto was one and the same. The Yard report said that there were speculations that two individuals were directly involved in attack on Ms Bhutto. “The suggestion was that one suspect fired shots, and the second detonated the bomb. But the available evidence points toward the person who fired shots and the person who detonated the explosives being one and the same person. Body parts from only one individual remain unidentified. Expert opinion provides strong evidence that they originate from the suicide bomber.” The inevitable conclusion is that there was one attacker in the immediate vicinity of the vehicle in which Ms Bhutto was travelling. In essence, all the evidence indicates that one suspect fired the shots outside the Liaquat Bagh before detonating an improvised explosive device, the Scotland Yard report had observed.
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