Bhutto killing conspiracy theorists feel vindicated by hints of state involvement
Report fails to identify perpetrators but 'it is the closest we'll get', say observers

Pakistan Friday welcomed a report by a UN-appointed panel which said the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto could have been averted.A spokesman for President Asif Ali Zardari -- Bhutto's widower -- said in a statement "the Pakistan Peoples Party welcomes this endorsement as the main thrust of the UN report".The independent panel Thursday said the 2007 murder of Bhutto was avoidable and the authorities deliberately failed to properly investigate her death.

Conspiracy-minded Pakistanis have embraced the findings of the UN report as most believe that the murder of Benazir Bhutto was orchestrated by the country's military establishment. From the local roadside tea stall to the drawing rooms of Pakistan's elite, anyone suggesting that Bhutto was killed by jihadists is dismissed as naive. Even those who accept that Islamist extremists played a part insist that another hand was controlling them.
"We are a land of conspiracy theories," said Cyril Almeida, a columnist at Dawn newspaper, a Pakistani daily. "We don't yet fully understand this issue of militancy."
Since coming to power in early 2008 the Pakistan People's party has pushed for a UN inquiry rather than leaving matters to Pakistani law enforcement. The PPP lacked confidence in the police as it believed it was in no position to investigate the country's all-powerful military spy agencies, headed by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate.
"One hopes that this report will contribute to halting the impunity with which Pakistan's intelligence agencies and non-state actors perpetrate abuses, including political assassination," said Ali Dayan Hasan, a South Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, the international campaigning group. "If a domestic inquiry had reached the same conclusions, with the PPP in power, it would have been dismissed as politicised. The reality of power in Pakistan precludes the perpetrators of this assassination from being brought to book. This [report] is the closest we'll get."

The UN report concluded that a 15-year-old suicide bomber killed her. But it also pointed to a broader intrigue in which the military's role should be investigated - a view that chimes with popular Pakistani perceptions of a conspiracy involving the state.
The PPP emerges unscathed from the UN report, as no senior party official was singled out as culpable for the poor security arrangements. The commission dismissed another popular theory: that her husband, Asif Zardari, now president, was involved. Bhutto's security chief and senior party official, Rehman Malik, is now the interior minister.