Karachi blast probe officer replaced

ISLAMABAD, Oct 24: The government has replaced the officer who was investigating the October 18 Karachi blasts, Interior Ministry spokesman Brig (retd) Javed Iqbal Cheema told reporters here on Wednesday.

He said that Deputy Inspector General Manzoor Mughal had been replaced on the demand of the Pakistan People’s Party.

He denied reports that former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s name had been placed on the Exit Control List.

“The government has not put the name of the PPP chairperson on the ECL in the recent past,” he said.

Brig Cheema said the blast probe was progressing well. “We have found important leads and recoveries and the DNA tests are being conducted as heads of two suspected suicide bombers have been found at the blast site,” he said.

He said Ms Bhutto had been provided foolproof security on her return to the country but it had always been difficult to prevent suicide bombings, especially during big processions.

“Now we have prepared a code of conduct under which political parties cannot take out rallies, but they will be allowed to hold public meetings only at specified places,” he said.

Responding to a question about the PPP’s demand for involving foreign experts in the investigation, the spokesman said that local experts were capable of doing the work. He also rejected reports that officials of the US Federal Investigation Bureau were investigating the case.

Talking about composite dialogue with New Delhi, he said Islamabad had sought release of 266 Pakistani civilians languishing in Indian jails.

Courtesy: www.dawn.com

Taliban deny involvement

SPIN BOLDAK, Oct 22: Afghanistan’s Taliban do not attack outside Afghanistan and were not involved in an attack on former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in Karachi last week, a commander said on Monday.

“The Afghan Taliban are not involved in any attacks in foreign countries,” a commander of Taliban, Mullah Hayatullah Khan, said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

“I want to tell you, we are not involved in the attack on Benazir Bhutto’s convoy,” he said.

Mr Khan said there would be no let-up in their attacks through the winter.—Reuters

http://www.dawn.com/2007/10/23/top9.htm

Benazir blames establishment

KARACHI, Oct 22: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chairperson Benazir Bhutto said on Monday that she had “no information at this stage to conclude that Gen Musharraf was involved at any level in this conspiracy” (to assassinate her on Oct 18).

But Ms Bhutto said she was certain the establishment was behind the conspiracy.

“There are some powerful figures behind the assassination atrempt on me,” a Western agency quoted her as saying during a press conference at Bilawal House.

Ms Bhutto said she had requested President Musharraf to provide security officials of her choice, but there had been no response so far.

According to agency reports, Benazir Bhutto accused the chief of Pakistan Muslim League-Q, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, of ‘protecting the killers’. She gave no evidence to back up her claim, and provided no further details.

But Shujaat Hussain gave a far different story. He said Ms Bhutto’s husband, working with her and other party leaders, arranged the blasts to stir up public sympathy for her. The proof: Ms Bhutto went into her armoured vehicle minutes before the bombs exploded.

‘We will also say all this was a conspiracy,’’ Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain told a private television network, reacting to Ms Bhutto’s accusations of government involvement in the Karachi attack. Instead, he said, Ms Bhutto’s husband “hatched a conspiracy and they implemented it”.

“I am simply appalled by the statement of the president of the PML-Q that the PPP itself carried out the explosions. This is the kind of mindset that tries to validate terrorism.”

Ms Bhutto again threw the spotlight on the intelligence agencies, alleging that some Afghan mujahideen had “infiltrated the ISI and the country’s administration.

“They have a tacit support of senior officials.”

The former prime minister said she had an apprehension that “certain elements” would go to “any extent” to subvert the political process.

“There is a lot of money invloved -- narco money and gun-running money -- and chaos suits certain elements. So obviously we have concern about people who were associated with the Afghan jihad and who can go to any extent to stop democracy because it means death of extremism.”

GOVT-PPP DEAL: Ms Bhutto brushed aside allegations that she had cut a deal with a military ruler.

“I know my opponents say I am doing a deal with a dictator, but I am not. I am involved in dialogue for transition to democracy.

“My party says that we cannot work with a uniformed president. But we are in dialogue with the government about a mechanism for ensuring free and fair elections.”

Benazir Bhutto expressed concern over the decision to entrust the inquiry into Thursday’s tragedy to an official allegedly involved in the torture of her husband in prison eight years ago.

http://www.dawn.com/2007/10/23/top2.htm

‘Both blasts caused by suicide bombing’

KARACHI, Oct 21: Investigators have concluded that Thursday’s blasts in Benazir Bhutto’s homecoming procession were caused by twin sui-

cide bombings of varying intensities, sources close to a top police investigation team told Dawn.

The Sindh police chief had on Thursday night told the me-

dia that the first blast was caused by a hand-grenade and the second was of a suicide bombing.

However, during the course of investigation police have reached an opinion that the first blast was also result of a suicide bombing, although it was of less intensity compared with the second blast.

On Friday morning, during the evidence gathering from the blasts site, police found a severed head, with its one side intact. Police with the help doctors planned to carry out a reconstruction surgery of the face so that it could become identifiable, a senior police officer told Dawn on condition of anonymity.

Since the provincial police chief had stated that the first blast was caused by the hand-grenade, no police officer was wiling to contradict his statement by coming on record, he added.

Courtesy: http://www.dawn.com/2007/10/22/top5.htm

Fatima Bhutto criticises Benazir

KARACHI, Oct 21: Benazir Bhutto must take the responsibility for the deaths of 139 people in an attack on her homecoming rally by exposing them to danger for the sake of her own ‘personal theatre’, her estranged niece said.

Fatima Bhutto, the granddaughter of late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, also told AFP in an interview that her aunt’s return from exile would plunge the country further into turmoil.

“She insisted on this grand show, she bears a responsibility for these deaths and for these injuries,” the 25-year-old said at her family home in Karachi.

Fatima Bhutto, the daughter Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed by police in Karachi in 1996, has recently launched a series of salvos against her aunt.

She accused the PPP chairperson of protecting herself on her return to Pakistan with an armoured truck, while bussing in hundreds of thousands of supporters despite warnings of an attack.

“They died for this personal theatre of hers, they died for this personal show,” she said.

Speaking in a sitting room decked with oil paintings of her grandfather, father and other family members — although not her aunt — she also said her aunt was not the enemy of militancy that she claimed to be.

“She talks about extremism and nobody else points out that the Taliban was created under her last government,” she said, referring to the Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001.

Fatima also condemned the amnesty on corruption charges given to Ms Bhutto by Gen Musharraf.

The younger Bhutto, however, said she was not likely to enter Pakistan’s turbulent politics any time soon.—AFP