WHO killed Benazir Bhutto? How was it done? By bullet or bomb, or both? And who sent the killer — Islamic militants with links to Al Qaeda, rogue elements of the Pakistani Army, or political rivals in the election scheduled for Feb. 18?
Six weeks have passed since the assassination, and Pakistan seems no closer to a consensus on some of the most basic facts, making it ever more likely that the circumstances of Ms. Bhutto’s death will become grist for the political mills that grind remorselessly in that country, revitalizing the revenge and mistrust that have poisoned public life almost since the country’s founding in 1947.
So it was with the death of Ms. Bhutto’s father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, hanged in 1979 and lauded or condemned as murderer or martyr ever since; so, too, with the death in 1988 of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, who ordered Mr. Bhutto’s execution. His death in a plane crash — blamed variously on Islamic militants, rogue forces in the army, and scheming politicians (including Bhutto loyalists bent on revenge) — remains part of the morbid fabric of Pakistani politics.
On Friday, a Scotland Yard team released its findings after a two-and-a-half-week probe of Ms. Bhutto’s killing in Pakistan. The British experts found that “the only tenable cause” for her death was the severe trauma to her head suffered when a suicide attacker detonated his bomb as she tried to duck back into her armored Land Cruiser, ramming her head against the lip on the escape hatch. From examination of body parts lifted from the scene of the attack, and video and still photographs of the killing, they also concluded that there had been one, not two, assailants; the man who fired the gunshots that caused Ms. Bhutto to duck was, they said, ...
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