Bhutto Murder: Zardari alleges Govt hand, wants UN probe

Elements within the Pakistan government were involved in the killing of Bhutto, her husband alleged.

Elements within the Pakistan government were involved in the killing of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, her husband alleged today and sought the West’s support for a UN investigation into the assassination, saying the ongoing official probe is like putting a ‘fox in charge of the henhouse’.

“Her murder does not end her vision and must not be allowed to empower her assassins. Those responsible – within and outside of government — must be held accountable,” Asif Ali Zardari wrote in a commentary in the Washington Post.

“I call on the United Nations to commence a thorough investigation of the circumstances, facts and cover-up of my wife’s murder, modelled on the investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri,” he said.

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Zardari also called on the ‘friends of democracy in the West’, particularly the US and Britain, to support such an investigation.

“An investigation conducted by the government of Pakistan will have no credibility, in my country or anywhere else,” he wrote.

“One does not put the fox in charge of the henhouse.”

Zardari also alleged that the government postponed the general elections as they knew that Musharraf and his ‘King’s Party’, a reference to the PML-Q that backs the President, ‘were going to be thoroughly rejected at the polls and that the PPP and other pro-democracy parties would win a majority’.

Police personnel seen to control the situation during a massive protest over the statehood demand and the inclusion of Ladakh under the Sixth Schedule, in Leh on Wednesday. (ANI Video Grab)

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