UNITED NATIONS, APRIL 16
A possible link between Benazir Bhutto’s “independent” position on improved relations with India with its implications for the Kashmir dispute, and her assassination has been drawn by a UN investigation made public today.
The brutal killing of Bhutto in a gun and suicide attack outside a park in Rawalpindi in December 2007 could have been “prevented” but the then military ruler Pervez Musharraf’s government had failed to protect her, the report said.
The 65-page report by a three-member panel headed by Chile’s UN ambassador Heraldo Munoz was handed over to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. The probe was undertaken at the behest of the Pakistan government.
Unable to pinpoint who killed Bhutto, the panel said her assassination was “shrouded in mystery” and recommended the setting up of a “truth commission” to find who murdered Bhutto.
Such a Commission should follow “all leads and reasonable hypothesis, including Al Qaeda, Taliban and members of the so-called “establishment,” the report said.
