 KARACHI, PAKISTAN — The government of President Pervez Musharraf insists that those responsible for trying to kill former leader Benazir Bhutto in a bombing last week that left nearly 140 people dead will be brought to justice. But history suggests otherwise.
| I'm no Sherman Oakes, Ace Detective, but I'm guessing that if you don't want to solve a crime you won't. |
Of dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks that have taken place in Pakistan over the past several years, including a number of high-profile assassination bids, very few such cases have been definitively solved.
| I believe that in a number of those cases those controlling the investigations were also those who helped plan the festivities. |
One notable exception: two attempts in 2003 to kill Musharraf with bombs near his headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. The alleged mastermind was hunted down and shot to death months later by Pakistani security forces.
| Your own mortality is always so much more real than somebody else's, at least when your nose is rubbed in it. |
Analysts, together with current and former investigators and government officials, said it was highly unlikely that those who planned the attack against Bhutto as she returned home from eight years in self-imposed exile would be captured, tried and convicted.
That's prob'ly the Rantburg consensus, too. Benazir gave Perv the names of the five top suspects, all of them connected at one time or another with ISI. I can't imagine any of them being hauled in, and one of them is Perv's lover close personal friend. |
They cited imprecise investigative methods, the shifting nature of the many Islamic militant groups with the desire and motivation to kill Bhutto, the vagaries of the Pakistani judicial system and a degree of sympathy in some official quarters for the militants' cause. "Are we going to try? Yes," said one Pakistani official who is close to the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Are we going to succeed? To be very honest, I have my doubts."
| Do you intend to succeed? To be very honest, I have my doubts. |
Bhutto and the government have cast suspicion on radical Islamists who are angered by her pro-Western stance and repelled by the idea of a woman in a leadership role. But assuming that theory is correct, narrowing the list of suspects will be difficult and painstaking.
| I think we're down to approximately half the population of Pakistain for the suspects' shortlist now. |
No CSI here
Modern forensic methods are little used in Pakistan. From the moment of the attack early Friday, the crime scene was tainted and trampled by hundreds of people, victims and rescuers. Amid panic and chaos, police made little effort to cordon off the area around the blast. "It wasn't exactly CSI — not Miami, or Las Vegas, or even some small town," said a Western diplomat in Karachi, referring to the popular U.S. crime series in which latex-gloved forensics experts minutely examine the tiniest of clues. |