UN report says death of Benazir Bhutto preventable; fault of government

April 17, 2010A United Nations report released Thursday says that the death of Benazir Bhutto after a suicide bomber attacked her motorcade in 2007 was preventable and was caused by the failure of the government to live up to its obligations to protect her.

The report, released by a three-person UN commission, accused the Pakistani government of failing to take "the necessary measures to respond to the extraordinary, fresh and urgent security risks that they knew she faced." Additionally, Pakistani investigators were said to have deliberately avoided solving the case, as they were afraid that the evidence would indict the government.

According to the commission, "irreparable damage to the investigation" was caused by the actions taken directly after the assassination, including cleaning the area in which Bhutto was killed and failing to collect evidence pertaining to the crime. In an area that should have yielded thousands of pieces of evidence, UN investigators recovered only 23.

Supporters of Bhutto were also criticized; the report said that backup security for Bhutto was insufficient. Such security was the responsibility of Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, president of Pakistan. Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik was also singled out; he was accused of a "serious security lapse" in leaving the scene of the explosion that killed Bhutto.

The report was unexpectedly harsh, and provided damning accounts of specific security failures around the assassination. It said that "None of these entities [government agencies] took the necessary measures to respond to the extraordinary, fresh and urgent security risks that they knew she faced," and that "The commission believes that the failure of the police to investigate effectively Ms Bhutto's assassination was deliberate."