Word: pakistans
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...Minister Benazir Bhutto the security that could have saved her life, but elements within the powerful military establishment may even have played a role in her December 2007 assassination. Those are some of the chilling conclusions of a U.N. inquiry, published Friday, April 16, into the killing that rocked Pakistan in the final months in power of former military ruler President Pervez Musharraf...
...insufficient." The security plan drawn up on Dec. 27, 2007, the day of her assassination, was "flawed" and in many respects not even implemented. Too few police officers had been deployed to the political rally where she delivered her last speech. And there was poor coordination with her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) security. The PPP's security arrangements - headed by Rehman Malik, now the Interior Minister - are also heavily criticized in the U.N. report...
...commission was also highly critical of the "pervasive role" played by Pakistan's leading spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), then headed by Lieut. General Nadeem Taj, a key Musharraf ally and relative. While the ISI had no mandate to conduct criminal investigations, the report says its agents maintained a constant presence around the police probe. And the lack of a mandate didn't stop it from pursuing its own private investigation, the results of which were only sparingly and selectively shared with the police. There were also "credible assertions of politicized and clandestine action by the intelligence services" concerning...
...Interior Ministry, held a press conference, on Musharraf's instructions, to pin the assassination on Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed last August in a rocket strike in South Waziristan - a claim later supported by the CIA. According to the report, it was no secret that Pakistan's militants loathed Bhutto and her stance against Islamist violence. But the Musharraf government's "hasty" announcement, the report says, "was premature at best" and "prejudiced the police investigations which had not yet begun...
...jihadists is not ruled out by the report, nor is the possibility that Mehsud - once an ISI asset - may have been involved. But it suggests his potential involvement would have formed part of a broader conspiracy. The report also does not rule out the involvement of elements within Pakistan's powerful military establishment...