NYT: Bhutto's doctors felt pressured to conform to government accounts of her death

[deminks]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/world/asia/31inquiry.html?ex=1356757200&en=0437a4d38c541d38&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

LAHORE, Pakistan — New details of Benazir Bhutto’s final moments, including indications that her doctors felt pressured to conform to government accounts of her death, fueled the arguments over her assassination on Sunday and added to the pressure on Pakistan’s leaders to accept an international inquiry.

Athar Minallah, a board member of the hospital where Ms. Bhutto was treated, released her medical report along with an open letter showing that her doctors wanted to distance themselves from the government theory that Ms. Bhutto had died by hitting her head on a lever of her car’s sunroof during the attack.

In his letter, Mr. Minallah, who is also a prominent lawyer, said the doctors believed that an autopsy was needed to provide the answers to how she actually died. Their request for one last Thursday was denied by the local police chief.

Pakistani and Western security experts said the government’s insistence that Ms. Bhutto, a former prime minister, was not killed by a bullet was intended to deflect attention from the lack of government security around her. On Sunday, Pakistani newspapers covered their front pages with photographs showing a man apparently pointing a gun at her from just yards away.

[babylonsister]

1. IOW, felt pressured to lie. nt

[seemslikeadream]

2. Too bad the Times wasn't around in '63

oh yea.....never mind

[jpgray]

3. Isn't this splitting hairs? Regardless of the official story's truth, the attack caused her death

And given a determined suicidal attacker, no security for a public appearance is impregnable. So the only way the gov't benefits by clouding the waters is if evidence exists that indicates some degree of complicity--the fact that the security failed and caused her death is inarguable, as she would not have died without the occurrence of the attack. That in itself makes her death the result of breached security, regardless of whether she was killed by a bullet or blunt force head trauma.

(obviously it's important to get the truth, but I'm just speculating as to why the gov't would bother clouding the waters--it can't simply be to save face on security, since that has already happened and is irrevocable)

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

4. Well, if she was shot with a particular type/grade of bullet only manufactured by the US,...

,...could make a difference.

btw "chaos" is the best vehicle towards "control" (I read that somewhere along the way of studying the neocons' attitudes about governance)

[jpgray]

5. That's what I mean--if there's evidence of complicity, that could be a motivator

But I don't buy the "trying to save face" angle--their security measures clearly failed, since she was killed as a result of the attack. If they are tampering with the evidence, there has to be another reason.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

7. What other reason than to remove her and to install serious instability?

I am sorry. I am four hours past bedtime and must retire.

I just don't think 'tampering with evidence' is even an issue at this point since it's all ready been/being poisoned.

I don't see any serious inclination towards a full investigation,...at least, not until after it's too damn late,...just like HERE.

Nighty night. I am SOOOO tired.

:hi:

[Lucinda]

6. My understanding is that it has to do with the martyrdom issue

If she hit her head, its a different thing than being acknowledged to have been murdered. I'm sure someone will hop in and clarify my very lame description...

[MADem]

9. You got it. The suggestion is that it was HER fault. But it's bullshit. She was shot AND hit in

the head by a bullet--when you strike your head, you do not bleed all over the car and your clothes, and your BRAIN is not visible through a round hole (observed by the doctors as they tried for forty one minutes to revive her).


I still cannot believe she is gone.

[Lucinda]

11. I can't either. I don't know why it feels so unreal to me, when we all knew

how dangerous it would be for her to return. And then for them to try and marginalize it...

[DLnyc]

8. Yes, I think, reading between the lines, a bullet would be tied to ISI,

(Pakastani security fources)-. A bomb could be any of various wack-job extremist groups

My reading: relatively 'professional' assassin, with support and cover by Pakastani security forces, on orders (deniably) from Pervez, planned to and successfully did kill Benazir Bhutto. The plan was for the bomb to go off after and make it look like an unknown extremist act (or at least severely muddy the picture), but they had the hitman in to make sure she didn't survive (like she did the last attempt). Unfortunately for Pervez, times have changed, video is everywhere, and the assassin is right there in clear view.

? Was part of the plan to "pin it on Al-Ciaeda'?? Certainly, a bomb would help with that.

But I have to agree with you, it seems quite surreal to be arguing about how she was killed now. Perhaps it's just a strategy of sowing confusion and disarray. Similar to the aftermath of JFK: years and years of arguing and second-guessing, the ones who had the means, motive and opportunity, and who benefited most, never really got much attention as most people eventually just got "tired of hearing about it".

[College Liberal]

10. It gets better or worse

depending on how you look at it. I can't believe they actually thought they were going to get away with something this huge in the era of Camera-Phones :shrug:

[CreekDog]

12. this is late breaking news

it's a late breaking development on a former story, dated today. and it's important.

[deminks]

13. CNN reporting that doctors were "threatened".

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/12/31/pakistan.autopsy/index.html

(snip)

But Minallah issued an open letter on Monday and released the doctors' clinical notes to distance them from the government statement, and he also talked to CNN.

In the letter, Minallah said the doctors "suggested to the officials to perform an autopsy," but that Rawalpindi police chief Aziz Saud "did not agree." He noted that under the law, police investigators have "exclusive responsibility" in deciding to have an autopsy.

Minallah told CNN that he was speaking out because the doctors at the hospital were "threatened."

"They are government servants who cannot speak -- I am not," he said. He did not elaborate on the threats against the doctors.

(end snip)

[riverdeep]

14. After they get the international inquiry over there,

can they send one over here for some things a little 'off' here? Like, was the 2000 and 2004 election legitimate? Did 9/11 involve complicity from our government like an Italian official has recently claimed? And a few other things. They seemed to have learned from the masters of doing your crimes in plain view.

[Satyagrahi]

15. They were pressured to omit her neck wound from the official medical

report which only speaks of a wound above the right ear ("There was wound in right Temporoparietal region"; "the body did not reveal any other external injury."). The bullet probably passed right through there. That is why no "foreign body" can be seen on the X-ray images and they could claim that she was not hit by any bullets or shrapnel.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

16. An autopsy prohibited.

What is the first thing performed in any half-assed investigation of a crime?