Why was there no investigation?

Head of the UN inquiry report remains disappointed at the slow pace of progress.

WASHINGTON:

Four years after the former prime minister’s death, and more than a year after the release of the UN inquiry report into her assassination, Mark Quarterman, who headed the commission, remains disappointed at the slow pace of the investigation.

Quarterman, then chief of staff of the UN commission formed to conduct the inquiry, says it is unfortunate that the government of Pakistan is yet to move forward in this case.

“The commission had a number of key findings, one that there was little or no investigation into Bhutto’s assassination,” Quarterman tells The Express Tribune.

“The police never adequately pursued various leads, the crime scene was hosed down very quickly, obliterating quite a bit of evidence. No energy or effort went into the investigation.

“Secondly, it found that she had extremely inadequate security, that the security plan that was supposed to be executed on the day of her assassination was not effectively implemented, and that that security in itself was inadequate and partly led to her assassination,” he asserts.

Quarterman, who is now the research director at the Enough Project based in Washington DC, says that the UN commission found a number of groups that could have been possible threats to Bhutto.

“The reason I say possible threats is that, I need to remind that the commission was not a judicial body. And the ultimate fact finding about Bhutto’s assassination should have been from the duly constituted courts in Pakistan. “This was a commission of inquiry that did not have the ability to subpoena and was not constituted to do that. So what we did was we looked at possible threats to Bhutto and found that a number of entities and terrorist groups ranging from al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban and certain members of the establishment could have been possible threats to her.”

Quarterman, who visited Pakistan during the course of the investigation and interviewed several politicians close to Bhutto, says that the most difficult part of their inquiry was the lack of an investigation, information and evidence.

“The situation when the report was released was that there were a few, fairly low-level people in prison about to go on trial. The investigation didn’t reach beyond them, and it appears that the situation has not changed dramatically,” he states.

“More senior police officials have been arrested and charged with the lack of an investigation. But it is not entirely clear that it has moved forward significantly. Certainly there have been no announcements about that from Pakistan and that’s unfortunate.”

Looking back four years later, Quarterman says that for a UN report, it was a very blunt report. “I hope that the government of Pakistan would take the recommendations of the report, especially about moving forward with the investigation, and look closely at them.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 27^th, 2011.