Truth is a casualty of blast that killed Bhutto

An eyewitness is muzzled. A leaked report contradicts the official version of the crime. A body is buried before an autopsy can be conducted. A crime scene is hastily cleansed of evidence.

What may sound like a standard plot from pulp fiction is playing itself out in Pakistan, where it is widely believed that an active effort to cover up the truth behind the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto is under way....

Ishtiaq Hussain Shah, the Deputy Superintendent of Police who was alongside Ms. Bhutto's vehicle and gave an account of the assassination to a local newspaper from his hospital bed, has been silenced. Burly intelligence agents now posted in his ward stop anyone from talking to him.

An official report has surfaced in the local media containing detailed information on the pistol and bomb used in the highly sophisticated attack on Ms. Bhutto...

...The doctors at the hospital, who on the night of her death said she died of bullet wounds to the head and neck, mysteriously changed their story the next day....

According to that suppressed report on the assassination, the authenticity of which could not be verified, a pistol made by the Chinese company Norinco was recovered from the scene, with lot No. 311-90. An MUV-2 triggering mechanism for the bomb was found, similar to the ones used in 15 previous suicide bombings, and with the same lot number and factory code.

"It is a clear indicator that the same terrorist group is involved in almost all these incidents," the report concluded.

...The jihadists have enablers within the system that allow them to do their stuff," said Kamran Bokhari of Strategic Forecasting, a U.S.-based consulting firm.

"We're not talking high-level officials, just people at mid-level ...mostly junior, who could provide them with logistics to operate"....

After seeing the video clip of her stating that she was safe because it was against Islam to murder her, I knew that she was another liberal fool. Having said that, I am so very sorry for what is happening in Pakistan. But given the snake pit festering in the Tribal Area of the Northwest part of that country, we can see this and more coming. And it will keep coming until that area is brought under control. But this is what can happen when a government fails to extend full control over its territory.

"This government has brought a curse on us. Bomb blasts, strikes, unemployment, inflation and now they're snatching bread from us."
Officials loyal to President Pervez Musharraf have tried to play down the wheat crisis, but every day -- when suicide bombings don't grab the headlines -- Pakistani media carry images of desperate people queuing for bread.
Like a form of Chinese water torture on the psyche of an already traumatised and downtrodden nation, analysts said it could play a decisive role on election day.
"The wheat shortage occurred because the government ignored domestic consumption of 22 million tons per annum," Khaleeq Arshad, a senior member of the All Pakistan Flour Mills Association, told reporters. Arshad, who owns his own mill in Lahore, said the government exaggerated the yield of last year's "bumper crop."
It then compounded the problem by allowing the export of 1.6 million tons of wheat, against a target of just 500,000 tons, he said. The result was a handsome economic windfall for some, and seething frustration for millions of ordinary Pakistanis.
"The prices have doubled and now the most basic food item is available only at exorbitant prices -- it's a disgrace," said 30-year-old school teacher Sakina Batool. "I don't know how they claim credit for fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda when they're killing their own people through starvation."

For many Pakistanis, food trumps Al-Qaeda as election issue by Nasir Jaffry, Agence France Presse January 13, 2008.

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