British team to return next month

By Syed Irfan Raza

ISLAMABAD, Jan 27: The Scotland Yard team investigating the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto will be returning to the country some time next month and not on January 27 as announced by the government.

The reason behind the delay could not be ascertained and the British High Commission claimed that there was no schedule for the investigators’ return.

“The Scotland Yard team is not coming back in the next three days,” the high commission’s Press Secretary Aidan Liddle told Dawn.

When it was pointed out that Pakistan’s interior ministry had announced that the team would return on January 27, the official said: “There was no such schedule of their return.”

On the other hand caretaker Interior Minister Lt-Gen (retd) Hamid Nawaz said: “We were expecting the arrival of British investigators some time between January 26 and January 27, but we do not know the reason behind the delay.”

Asked whether the foreign investigators would submit their investigation report immediately after their return to the country or would do some more investigation, the minister said: “It would be up to them whether they submit the report at their return or take more time for this.”

Eight experts of the Scotland Yard have been probing the case and five forensic experts, after collecting evidences, had left the country in the second week of this month, while the other three flew back later.

The team arrived in Islamabad on January 4 and started the investigation on January 6.

The government had announced that in the light of the evidence gathered by the investigators and statements they had recorded, they would prepare a report in the UK determining the cause of death and present it to the government of Pakistan on their return.

However, analysts said the investigators had been facing difficulty due to lack of evidence. They said that police had not cordoned off the site of assassination, rather they had hosed it down the day Ms Bhutto had been murdered, erasing valuable evidences.

Another problem for the investigators was that a post-mortem of the body had not been conducted.