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Little done in Bhutto investigation

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Times Staff Writer

More than six months after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, the Pakistani authorities’ investigation of her killing appears to have ground to a near-halt, with the trail growing colder.

The elegant and charismatic former prime minister, one of the most popular politicians in Pakistan’s history, was killed Dec. 27 as she left a campaign rally at a park in Rawalpindi, the seat of the Pakistani military.

Her death at 54 stunned Pakistan and the world, but no independent Pakistani commission has been appointed to investigate the assassination, and police activity is barely sputtering along, according to several people familiar with the case.

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The investigation has stalled despite the fact that her Pakistan People’s Party is now the senior partner in the country’s governing coalition, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, wields enormous influence as the party’s leader.

“It looks as if it’s a forgotten chapter,” said Talat Masood, a retired general who is now a political analyst. “The internal agencies are not very active and focused on it.”

Baitullah Mahsud, the Taliban commander swiftly accused by the Pakistani government of masterminding the assassination, remains free in the country’s tribal areas. Military officials say there has been no attempt to capture him. In May, he held a news conference before dozens of journalists.

Mahsud, who denies any involvement in Bhutto’s slaying, has also engaged in truce talks with the new government.

Beyond accusing Mahsud, the government has made little visible headway. The cases of five people arrested in the weeks after Bhutto’s death are being heard by a special anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi. But even the prosecution describes the accused as relatively low-level figures.

Naseer Ahmed Tanoli, lawyer for three of the five accused, says his clients have been tortured and prevented from seeing family members or getting legal counsel. The court proceedings are secret, and another session is scheduled for mid-July, lawyers said.

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The key players in the killing -- those who financed the operation and recruited the assailants -- remain at large, said a senior police official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Police have been ordered not to speak publicly about the case. Two senior officers backed out of an agreement to be interviewed about the status of the inquiry, saying they could not discuss it without the authorization of Rehman Malik, the top official in the Interior Ministry, Pakistan’s civilian law enforcement agency.

Malik did not respond to requests for an interview or for permission to talk to investigators. A People’s Party loyalist, Malik was Bhutto’s senior security advisor at the time of the assassination, and his role in deciding her security arrangements has been criticized.

Analysts say the possibility that former or current figures in the government or security agencies were involved has never gotten a full airing.

“There are two ways to kill a person: One is to attack them, and the other is to make sure security is so lax, you know that one of a number of people coming at them will succeed,” said Ikram Sehgal, a former senior military official who is now a journalist and analyst.

Doctors who attended to Bhutto on the night she was killed also have been ordered to remain silent -- restrictions put in place by the previous government loyal to President Pervez Musharraf.

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Asked whether Bhutto’s party coming to power meant he could now speak freely about the case, a doctor at Rawalpindi General Hospital replied, “No way, no way.” The doctor, who was present as physicians fought to save the former prime minister, requested anonymity, fearing reprisal from security services.

Before taking power in elections held six weeks after the assassination, Bhutto’s party expressed deep skepticism about the government’s version of events surrounding the killing, including the conclusion that she was killed by the suicide bomber that hit her vehicle rather than by gunshots.

At the time, her party was also demanding an investigation of several former and current government officials whom Bhutto had named as a threat to her security. She cited the names in a letter to Musharraf, after a massive suicide attack on her homecoming convoy in October that killed more than 150 people in the port city of Karachi.

None of the people she mentioned has been called formally for questioning. And one, former Intelligence Bureau chief Ejaz Shah, was allowed to leave Pakistan in March, according to officials and news reports.

Bhutto’s party now says it has no plans to appoint an independent Pakistani commission, saying that only the United Nations can carry out a credible investigation. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in late June that the request was under review, but many analysts believe the world body is unlikely to undertake such a mission.

“There’s no international will for a U.N. investigation -- my estimation is that the issue will just get stuck,” said Arif Rafiq, a U.S.-based policy consultant who edits the Pakistan Policy Blog.

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Some outside experts have been permitted a limited role in the inquiry. Under intense international pressure last year, Musharraf allowed Scotland Yard to offer forensic and technical assistance. Their task was hindered by her husband’s refusal to allow an autopsy and by the destruction of forensic evidence when Pakistani authorities hosed down the scene soon after the attack.

The Scotland Yard investigators concurred with Pakistani authorities’ contention that Bhutto was killed by the force of the bomb blast, not gunshots. They also agreed that the bomber and the gunman were the same person.

But the British police had no mandate to address questions of broader culpability. And offers of additional assistance by both Scotland Yard and the FBI have been turned down, according to British and U.S. diplomats.

Bhutto’s memory still inspires her followers. Thousands of weeping supporters converged on her ancestral hometown on June 21, what would have been her 55th birthday. Mourners still leave flowers and light candles at the site of the attack.

Yet despite the outpouring of grief and rage at the time of the assassination, there is little public outcry over the lack of progress in the investigation.

“There are so many other things now to occupy people’s attention: food prices, gasoline prices, power shortages, the militancy,” said Omar Qureishi, opinion editor of the nationally circulated newspaper The News. “It’s not that people don’t care, but they feel overwhelmed by other things.”

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Pakistan also has a long history of unsolved killings of its leaders, including the 1951 assassination of the country’s first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, in the same park where Bhutto held her last rally. Nor has the mysterious plane crash that killed military leader Gen. Zia ul-Haq in 1988 been explained.

Musharraf has denied any government involvement in the killing. But as time goes on, Bhutto’s supporters worry that her killers, too, may also go forever unidentified.

“She was someone who put her life on the line,” said Sherry Rehman, a party activist who was riding in the car behind Bhutto’s at the time of the attack and is now Pakistan’s information minister. “It is not enough to find the hand that pulled the trigger. It is so much larger than that.”

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laura.king@latimes.com

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Times staff writer Maggie Farley at the United Nations contributed to this report.

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