British experts examine scene of Bhutto murder in Pakistan (Roundup)

Jan 5, 2008, 16:05 GMT

Islamabad - Investigators from Britain's Scotland Yard on Saturday examined the scene where Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in the country's garrison city of Rawalpindi.

Security forces cordoned off the area and the media was not allowed to talk to British policemen as they inspected the site for almost two hours and took the pictures from various angles of the place where a gun-suicide bombing attack killed former prime minister Bhutto, 54, on December 27 as she left a campaign rally.

The five-member team of forensics specialists and technical experts from London's Metropolitan Police Service Counterterrorism Command arrived on Friday after a request from Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

A few hours after landing, the British team was briefed by Pakistani security officials about the status of the investigation and evidence collected. The investigators also examined vehicles that were damaged in the blast.

Scotland Yard is only assisting the Pakistani government and is not carrying out its own investigation. However, the British team was allowed to contact witnesses to the attack and medical staff who treated Bhutto after she was rushed to Rawalpindi General Hospital, Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Cheema said.

Much of the forensic evidence was washed away shortly after the attack by local street workers who cleaned the blast site with fire hoses, a Pakistani police official told The News newspaper.

The British team will likely be limited to scrutinizing video tapes that captured one attacker firing at Bhutto, the police official said. A second man, standing next to the shooter, was also captured on video and there is speculation that he detonated the bomb.

Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP)has rejected Scotland Yard's assistance in the investigations, saying they would only accept an independent inquiry by the United Nations.

'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 Hariri,' Bhutto's widow Asif Ali Zardari wrote in an article published in The Washington Post on Saturday.

He called upon 'friends of democracy in the West, in particular the United States and Britain, to endorse the call for such independent investigation,' adding that 'Those responsible within and outside of (Pakistan's) government must be held accountable.'

Any investigation conducted by the Pakistani government, which Zardari has accused of ordering the hit, will have no credibility locally or internationally, he wrote.

It is not the first time that Scotland Yard has been called in to help an investigation into the political assassination of a Pakistani leader.

British police participated in the investigation into the murders of the country's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, in 1951 and Bhutto's brother Murtza Bhutto in 1996, but were requested to leave the country before the probes were completed. Both killings remained unsolved.

Government officials have indicated that this time the British investigators will stay in the country until the investigation is concluded.

'Maximum support and information would be provided to the Scotland Yard team for them to carry out the investigation independently,' local TV Dawn News quoted Musharraf as saying.