Graphic: Violence in Pakistan

A notorious al-Qaeda leader named Baitullah Mehsud was named by Pakistan’s Government last night as the mastermind behind Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.

The security services intercepted a call from Mehsud yesterday morning in which he “congratulated his people for carrying out this cowardly act,” Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, the Interior Ministry’s spokesman, announced.

In a transcript of the call released by the Government an interlocutor named Maulvi Sahib tells Mehsud that three men were involved in the attack and two — Badarwala Bilal and Ikramullah — actually carried it out. Mehsud tells Maulvi Sahib not to tell the men’s families yet and adds: “It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her.”

Q&A: the murder of Benazir Bhutto

Times South Asia Correspondent asks who had most to gain from killing the Pakistan People's Party leader

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But Brigadier Cheema also deepened the confusion surrounding Ms Bhutto’s death by insisting that she had been killed not by her assassin’s bullets or by shrapnel from his suicide bomb, but from a fractured skull caused by her head smashing into the lever of her vehicle’s sunroof following the blast.

This directly contradicted accounts given by doctors and security officials on Thursday who said that she had died from bullet wounds to her head and spinal cord.

A senior Bhutto aide last night called the Government’s explanation a “pack of lies”. “Two bullets hit her, one in the abdomen and one in the head,” said Farook Naik, her top lawyer and a senior official in her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

“Bhutto’s personal secretary, Naheed Khan, and party official Makhdoom Amin Fahim were in the car and they saw what happened. It is an irreparable loss and they are turning it into a joke with such claims. The country is heading towards civil war.”

Brigadier Cheema was speaking at a packed press conference in Islamabad that seemed designed to allay suspicion that the Government had colluded in the assassination, or failed to protect Ms Bhutto.

He argued that the PPP leader had ignored the Government’s security advice, and seemed to suggest that she would have survived had she followed it. The vehicle was bomb-proof and bullet-proof.

“If she had not come out of the vehicle she would have been unhurt, as all the other occupants of the vehicle did not receive any injuries,” he said, adding: “It pains me, I say with a lot of anguish, that we wish she had not come out of that vehicle to wave to the people.”

Mr Naik also questioned the Government’s claim that Mehsud ordered the assassination. “The Government is now claiming that Baitullah Mehsud is responsible. What is the evidence?” he asked.

Hillary Clinton, the US senator and Democratic presidential contender, waded into the row last night, calling for an independent, international investigation of Ms Bhutto's death.

“I don’t think the Pakistani Government at this time under President Musharraf has any credibility at all,” she said. “They have disbanded an independent judiciary, they oppressed a free press.”

The Interior Ministry released the transcript of its intelligence intercept, and said that there was “irrefutable evidence that al-Qaeda, its networks and cohorts are trying to destabilise Pakistan”.

Brigadier Cheema described Mehsud as an al-Qaeda leader who was also behind the attack on Ms Bhutto’s homecoming parade in Karachi on October 18, which killed 140 people, and claimed that he was “responsible for most of the attacks that have taken place in the country”. Other targets had included President Musharraf, senior government officials and army and intelligence officers.

Mehsud is thought to be based in the lawless tribal area of South Waziristan, near the Afghan border, where Pakistani troops have been fighting Islamist rebels for several years. He has ties to the Taleban as well as to al-Qaeda, and was quoted in a Pakistan newspaper last autumn as saying that he would greet Ms Bhutto’s return from exile with suicide bombers.

Not a lot else is known about the man. He reportedly has close ties to Mullar Omar, the Taleban leader in Afghanistan. He is said to run a “parallel government” with a private army of 20,000 that imposes strict Islamic law in Waziristan. Before he kills proGovernment tribal leaders he allegedly sends them a 1,000 rupee note, a thread and a needle with instructions that the recipient should buy himself a shroud.

Asked why Pakistan’s security services could intercept Mehsud’s calls but not track him down, Brigadier Cheema said that he moved fast and went to ground very quickly after contacting followers and was therefore hard to pick up.

The Interior Ministry released a grainy video taken of Ms Bhutto just moments before she was shot as she left a rally in a park in Rawalpindi on Thursday afternoon.

It shows her standing up through the sunroof of her stationary sports utility vehicle and confidently waving to supporters. The film ends abruptly as shots ring out. One, possibly two, guns can be seen above the heads of the crowd behind the vehicle. Given the crush around the vehicle it seems impossible that the assailant — or assailants — were on a motorbike as some early reports claimed.

Brigadier Cheema said that all three shots fired by the attacker missed Ms Bhutto. She was killed when she tried to duck back into the vehicle and shock waves from the suicide bomb rammed her head into a lever attached to the sunroof, he said.

“The lever struck near her right ear and fractured her skull . . . There was no bullet or metal shrapnel found in the injury.”

Brigadier Cheema said that Ms Bhutto’s husband had refused to permit a post-mortem examination on her body — Islam discourages desecration of dead bodies. But he said X-rays and an external investigation showed that “there was no bullet that hit her . . . there was no splinter that hit her”.

Pakistan’s Government is facing considerable public anger for failing to protect Ms Bhutto. Brigadier Cheema sought to deflect that anger by insisting the Government had done everything in its power to protect her.

He said that everybody at the rally in Rawalpindi had been searched, Ms Bhutto’s rostrum had been bullet-proof, and “all possible security arrangements were made within the resources of the Government of Pakistan”. He insisted that “no political leader in this country has been provided with as much security”.

Brigadier Cheema announced two inquiries into the assassination — one by a high court judge and the other by the security services. He also said that several other prominent Pakistani politicians were under threat from Islamic militants, and named Nawaz Sharif, leader of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League, as one of them.

The 20 other people who died in the assassination included Tauqee Akram, 35, the husband of a British woman and active member of Ms Bhutto’s PPP. His widow, Lubna Akram, lives in Halliwell, Bolton, and the couple have two children.

‘Congratulations’

This is a translation of the alleged telephone conversation yesterday between Baitullah Mehsud, a senior al-Qaeda leader, and Maulvi Sahib, another militant, which the Pakistan Interior Ministry said had been intercepted after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto:

Maulvi Sahib (MS) Asalaam Aleikum (Peace be with you)

Baitullah Mehsud (BM) Waleikum Asalam (And also with you)

MS Chief, how are you?

BM I am fine

MS Congratulations, I just got back during the night

BM Congratulations to you, were they our men?

MS Yes they were ours

BM Who were they?

MS There was Saeed, there was Bilal from Badar and Ikramullah

BM The three of them did it?

MS Ikramullah and Bilal did it

BM Then congratulations

MS Where are you? I want to meet you

BM I am at Makeen [town in South Waziristan tribal region], come over, I am at Anwar Shah’s house

MS OK, I’ll come

BM Don’t inform their house for the time being

MS OK

BM It was a tremendous effort. They were really brave boys who killed her

MS Mashallah (Thank God). When I come I will give you all the details

BM I will wait for you. Congratulations, once again congratulations

MS Congratulations to you

BM Anything I can do for you?

MS Thank you very much.

BM Asalaam Aleikum

MS Waaleikum Asalaam

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