Court summons Musharraf, 10 others in Benazir killing case

LAHORE - The Lahore High Court has summoned former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf and 10 others in a case relating to the Dec 27, 2007 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Among others, judge Ejaz Ahmed Chaudhry summoned to appear Sep 28 are Interior Minister Rehman Malik, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Babar Awan and then Punjab chief minister Pervez Elahi, Online news agency reported.

The summons was issued on a petition contending that these individuals were involved in the gun and bomb attack that killed Bhutto as she left a political rally in the garrison town of Rawalpindi adjacent to Pakistani capital Islamabad and that a first information report should be registered against them.

Judge Asif Saeed Khosa had earlier refused to hear the petition when it was presented before him.

To go by his track record, Musharraf, who is currently in Britain on a lecture tour, is unlikely to respond to the summons. In July, he did not respond to a Supreme Court summons while it was hearing a petition on legality of the emergency Musharraf had imposed Nov 3, 2007. The court later ruled that his action was unconstitutional.

Pakistan’s investigations into Bhutto’s killing, as also one by Scotland Yard, failed to make headway largely because the spot where Bhutto was attacked was hosed down soon after the incident, destroying whatever evidence might have existed.

Pakistan then requested a UN probe into the assassination and this is currently underway.

A UN team had Aug 24 visited the Rawalpindi hospital where Bhutto was rushed after the fatal attack to collect details about her wounds and treatment.

The UN officials interacted with the staff of the Benazir Shaheed Hospital for more than two hours.

Hospital doctor Musaddaq Hussain told the UN team that Bhutto’s autopsy was not conducted on the request of her husband Asif Ali Zardari, who is now the president of Pakistan.

The team also visited the operation theatre, the treatment room and the site where the doctors formally announced her death.

The team earlier visited the site where she was attacked.

The seven-member UN team started its probe July 1 and will submit a report to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon after completing the investigation. Ban will then share the report with the Pakistani government and the Security Council.