By IRNA
Rawalpindi : An anti-terrorism court on Monday issued arrest warrant for the chief of Pakistani Taliban movement over plotting the murder of former premier Benazir Bhutto.
Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi on December 27 in firing and bomb blast shortly after she addressed an election rally.
The government had accused Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsood for masterminding Benazir assassination, the charge denied by Mehsood’s spokesman.
Judge of the anti-terrorism court Habib-ur-Rehman also extended physical remand of the arrested suspects until March 18.
Relatives were also allowed to meet the accused.
The accused were brought to the court under tight security.
The police had formally charged Pakistani Taliban commander earlier this month with plotting the murder of Benazir Bhutto and had declared him absconder.
Mehsood is based in the tribal area of South Waziristan who was also accused by the American CIA of planning Bhutto’s assassination.
Bhutto escaped unhurt in October last year in twin suicide bombings which had killed over 140 people in Karachi.
Her welcoming procession was targeted as she returned the country at the end of her 8-year exile.
British detectives, who carried out inquiry into Bhutto’s assassination at the request of President Pervez Musharraf, said that she died due to the intensity of the suicide attack and that she was not hit by bullet.
Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party has demanded a UN probe rejecting the findings by British police that a lone assassin shot her but missed and then detonated explosives, which made her fatally smash her skull against her car.
Pakistani security forces had arrested a teenager bomber Aitzaz Shah from the city of Dera Ismail Khan in northwest and later another arrested on information provided by him, Two others Hasnain Gul and Rafaqat, who were accused of facilitating the bombers, arrested from Rawalpindi later, who according to police had confessed help in the crime.
Qari Saifullah Akhtar, a top militant and mentioned by Benazir Bhutto in her book in connection with an October assassination attempt on her was also arrested this month.