A year on, Bhutto's assassination remains unresolved

Islamabad: The mystery of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's assassination remains unresolved as her first death anniversary approaches, though police and Scotland Yard experts say she died after her head hit the sunroof lever of her costly and bomb proof Toyota Land Cruiser.

Bhutto was killed in a gun and bomb attack December 27 last year when she was leaving after addressing an election rally in the adjacent garrison town Rawalpindi. When she appeared from the sunroof of her vehicle to wave to the gathering, she was fired at followed by a bomb blast that also killed five of her supporters.

Pakistani authorities said at the time that Bhutto had escaped the bullets but grievously hurt herself when her head hit the lever while ducking down.

Bhutto also wrote an email to an American journalist, Wolf Blitzer, on October 26, 2007 saying that then President Pervez Musharraf should be held responsible if she was killed. Benazir was also aware of the danger to her life, as the interior ministry had already informed her about the threats to her life on December 12, 2007. In spite of all this, she continued her election campaign.

She said on December 26, 2007 in a public gathering in Peshawar that life should be lived like a lion, not like a jackal. A seven-member team of doctors which examined Bhutto told the health ministry that she had open wounds on her left temporal region from which "brain matter was exuding". According to the report, it was not a bullet wound but was caused by an edged object - probably the sunroof lever.

No progress

However, Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) that is now headed by her son Bilawal and widower President Asif Ali Zardari did not agree with the report, after which the government sought the services of Scotland Yard to investigate the case.

Scotland Yard officers, after five weeks of investigation, reported there was sufficient evidence to suggest that Bhutto died due to a severe head injury "sustained as a consequence of the bomb blast and due to head impact somewhere in the escape hatch of the vehicle".

The PPP, after coming into power in February, requested the UN to probe the killing but there has been no progress on this so far.