Bhutto Inquiry FUBAR; Scotland Yard Called In

The Musharraf regime says it already knows who killed Benazir Bhutto -- and how. But "United States intelligence analysts are not convinced," according to the New York Times. And now, the Pakistani government is asking Scotland Yard to help with the investigation.

Pakistani authorities, working from a single intelligence intercept collected the day after Ms. Bhutto’s death, have identified a militant leader, Baitullah Mehsud, as the chief suspect behind the attack.

“As far as I know, the Pakistanis are saying this is it, this is the proof,” said a senior State Department official, who, like other officials contacted for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation. “Before our guys say yes or no, they need a hell of a lot more than one thing, even if it is a substantial piece of evidence...” *

A Pentagon official said that
American analysts were examining several other potential enemies of Ms.
Bhutto, including elements of Pakistani Taliban groups and other Islamic extremists. “There are so many people who’d want to kill her, it’s difficult to ascribe any one agency,” the official said.

Juan Cole flags a U.S. Government Open Source Center report that Al Qaeda websites haven't taken credit, so far, for Bhutto's killing -- despite the Musharraf administration's insistence that the jihadists are to blame.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani government seems to be, at best, confused as hell about the cause of Bhutto's death.

*After absurdly insisting for days that Benazir Bhutto had died from the blow of her head against the sun roof of her vehicle (when she ducked down due to the close range gun fire), the government seemed to finally come clean. *

It was all the fault of the Interior Ministry's hasty spokesman, who'd floated the sun roof theory, it turned out. During a meeting with Pakistani newspaper journalists, the Interior Minister, Hamid Nawaz, asked them to "please forgive us and ignore the comment." Because, well, "we are not so articulate to present our views as you journalists can."

But it was only a couple of hours, apparently, before the government took back the take-back -- in the form of a "clarification." As Pakistan's News summarizes a government press release, "As a matter of fact [Nawaz] had merely appealed to the editors to overlook the tone and style of the spokesman which may not have been received well."

Athar Minallah, a board member of the hospital where Ms Bhutto was taken, released an open letter to the Musharraf administration over the weekend "showing that [Bhutto's] doctors wanted to distance themselves from the
Government theory that she had died by hitting her head on a lever on her vehicle's sunroof during the attack," the Sydney Morning Herald notes. "In his letter, Mr Minallah, who is also a lawyer, said the doctors believed that an autopsy was needed to provide the answers to how she died. Their request for one was denied by the local police chief."