Pakistan Views

Counter-terrorism experts from Scotland Yard on Saturday made their first inspection of the site where former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was martyred last week, police said.

Armed commandos enforced a security cordon around the Liaquat Bath public park where Benazir was martyred shortly after leaving a campaign rally on December 27, an AFP photographer witnessed.

The seven-member team of British detectives arrived on Friday, a day after President Pervez Musharraf’s announcement that their specialist skills in forensics would assist Pakistani agencies in determining how Benazir died.

“The Scotland Yard team is examining the venue where she addressed a rally and the site where she was attacked,” a Rawalpindi police official told AFP.

Interior Ministry of Pakistan has blamed the gun and suicide attack on an alleged al Qaeda militant and says Benazir died from an accidental head wound as she ducked for cover.

But Benazir’s aides who were by her side during the attack say she died from a gunshot to the head. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, refused to allow an autopsy before she was buried, saying “we know how she died.”

President Musharraf bristled on Thursday when asked whether the Britons would be allowed to question politicians and an intelligence chief whom Benazir had accused of plotting to martyr her, saying there would be no “wild goose chase.”