President Pervez Musharraf on Sunday called for the exhumation of the body of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, as he rejected a UN investigation in her assassination.
“Yes, exhume it. A hundred per cent. I would like it (the body) to be exhumed. Because I know for sure there is no bullet wound other than on the right side. Whether it was a bullet or a strike, I don’t want to comment, I don’t know,” he told Newsweek from Rawalpindi.
The exhumation, he said, will lay to rest all allegations of the government involvement in Ms Bhutto’s assassination. The president said the man in-charge of the security of Ms Bhutto – who was killed in a gun and suicide attack on December 27 in Rawalpindi after addressing an election rally – was “her own handpicked superintendent of police”.
“This area (where she was killed) was known to be dangerous. There was a death threat, intelligence that there would be an attack, and we told her, yet she wanted to go… She went into a dangerous place, and if you get out of the (bullet-proof) vehicle, you are responsible. All others sitting inside the vehicle were safe,” he said.
About allegations that in some way the government was complicit in the killing of Bhutto, he said: “I refuse to listen to such accusations… I am the government, OK? I am not feudal, and I am not tribal.”
When asked if he had seen the X-rays of Bhutto, he said “Yes,” adding, “I am a soldier, I’ve seen a lot of bullet wounds. A bullet wound is a small hole, and if the bullet goes through it makes a big hole on the other side. Now that is what I understand to be a bullet wound. This was not that, although I’m not an expert. But how does it absolve the government if it was a bullet or not?”
“Why would we be hiding (the cause of Bhutto’s death)? It’s ridiculous, and when I read these comments, I laugh at them,” Musharraf said. However, the president said he would not order a post-mortem without the agreement of Ms Bhutto’s family. A post-mortem would have huge political ramifications.
He asserted that the PPP was not agreeing to a post-mortem, as they knew that there was no conspiracy behind her death. Asked why he should not use his executive power to order it, he said: “Everything is not black and white here. It would have very big political ramifications. If I just ordered the body exhumed, that would be careless, unless (Ms Bhutto’s) people agreed. But they will not.”
He said Ms Bhutto’s supporters had not agreed to a post-mortem “because they know it’s a fact there is nothing wrong.” Asked whether Asif Ali Zardari was playing politics in seeking UN probe, the president said, “Everybody is trying to gain political advantage; the entire opposition is trying to take political advantage. I know what (Bhutto’s opponents) used to say about her, but all of a sudden … it makes me laugh, actually…When the body was at the hospital, Zardari himself said it could not be done; he didn’t want the post-mortem done.
“Now, he says if there were a United Nations investigation, he would allow a post-mortem. There cannot be a UN investigation. There are not two or three countries involved. Why should there be a UN investigation? This is ridiculous.”
President Musharraf was also asked in the interview about reports that the United States was thinking about launching CIA operations in Pakistan with or without Pakistan’s approval.
“We are totally in cooperation on the intelligence side,” he said. “But we are totally against (a military operation). We are a sovereign country. We will ask for assistance from outsiders. They won’t impose their will on us.” In the interview, Musharraf also expressed his refusal to let the United States launch CIA operations against al-Qaeda in Pakistan.