World | Pakistan
Bhutto's assassination spawns conspiracy theories galore
In Pakistan's Kafkaesque world, conspiracy theories are given far more credence than the official accounts of Benazir Bhutto's assassination.
- Reuters
- Published: 23:08 January 1, 2008
Islamabad: In Pakistan's Kafkaesque world, conspiracy theories are given far more credence than the official accounts of Benazir Bhutto's assassination.
"Our history is full of such assassinations and all have been done by invisible hands, agencies," said Aqueel-ur-Rehman, manager of a filling station in Peshawar.
"Thinking about anybody else would be foolish."
President Pervez Musharraf's government has made Al Qaida its prime suspect in the killing of an opposition leader who stood a real chance of becoming prime minister for a third time after a January 8 election, now likely to be delayed.
Al Qaida and its allies among Pakistani jihadi groups certainly wanted Bhutto dead.
Even so, ordinary people are more willing to believe she was killed by political enemies close to Musharraf, rogue elements in the establishment, intelligence agencies and even the United States though it had backed her return from exile.
The government says Bhutto died when she cracked her skull on a sunroof handle during a gun and suicide bomb attack last Thursday, though television pictures show her hair and veil lifting as a clean-shaven gunman nears her car and fires.
Most people wrote off the the official version as a clumsy attempt to divert attention from security lapses.
"People believe that the lapses were deliberate so that the assassins could get close to her and kill her," said Hamid Gul, a retired general who served as head of the military's Inter-Service Intelligence during Bhutto's first government.
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