By Muhammad Najeeb, IANS
Islamabad : The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has disputed Scotland Yard’s finding that party chief and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was killed due to the bomb blast impact, but it will give its formal reaction Monday, the party’s legal counsel said.
“I have studied the report and would give the formal reaction after discussing it with the senior party officials,” PPP legal counsel Farooq Naik told IANS Saturday.
The British team Friday made public its findings after probing Bhutto’s Dec 27 assassination. The report released after 20 days investigation concluded that Bhutto suffered a fatal head injury when the force of the blast from a suicide bomber pushed her against a lever on the roof of her bombproof Land Cruiser.
The British team, which was called by President Pervez Musharraf, ruled out that the head injury could have been caused by a bullet.
Pakistan’s government gave a similar statement a day after Bhutto’s murder. But the PPP says she was hit by a bullet and suspects a government cover-up because she had accused Musharraf’s political allies of plotting to kill her.
“We disagree with the report and are convinced that investigations should be done by the UN,” Naik said adding that the government itself has said Al Qaeda was involved in the killing.
“And Al Qaeda is operating in many countries, according to the US, so we think the UN should conduct inquiry into the murder,” he said.
Television pictures appeared to show a gunman firing a pistol at Bhutto as she waved to supporters from the vehicle’s escape hatch moments before the blast.
British investigators confirmed shots were fired but said they did not cause her death.