Assassination is Laid to Team of Precision Snipers

This New York Sun article points out that Pakistan Army's Special Service Group (SSG) commandos murdered Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairwoman Ms. Benazir Bhutto, 54 (1953-2007), in her vehicle on Thursday, 27 December 2007 during the PPP rally at the Liaqat Bagh (park) in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Anti-Benazir criminal terrorist Pervez Musharraf worked for seven years in the Pakistan Army's Special Service Group of Commandos, where he learned the evil art of assassination. visit source

Pakistan Army's SSG Commandos Killed PPP Chief Benazir Bhutto
By ELI LAKE

WASHINGTON DC, USA, 28 December 2007 (The New York Sun):

American and Pakistani military leaders are seeking to account for what may be renegade commando units from the Pakistani military's special forces in the wake of the assassination of Pakistan's Opposition leader and former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto.

The attack yesterday at Rawalpindi bore the hallmarks of a sophisticated military operation. At first, Bhutto's rally was hit by a suicide bomb that turned out to be a decoy. According to press reports and a situation report of the incident relayed to The New York Sun by an American intelligence officer, Bhutto's armored limousine was shot by multiple snipers whose armor-piercing bullets penetrated the vehicle, hitting the former premier five times in the head, chest and neck. Two of the snipers then detonated themselves shortly after the shooting, according to the situation report, while being pursued by local police.

A separate attack was thwarted at the local hospital where Bhutto possibly would have been revived had she survived the initial shooting. Also attacked yesterday was a rival politician, Nawaz Sharif, another former Prime Minister who took power after Bhutto lost power in 1996.

A working theory, according to this American source, is that groups had effectively suborned at least one unit of Pakistan's Special Services Group, the country's equivalent of Britain's elite SAS commandos. This official, however, stressed this was just a theory at this point. Other theories include that the assassins were trained by [SSG] or were from other military services, or the possibility that the assassins were retired Pakistani special forces.

"They just killed the most protected politician in the whole country," this source said. "We really don't know a lot at this point, but the first thing that is happening is we are asking the Pakistani military to account for every black team with special operations capabilities."

Bhutto survived a suicide bombing attack in October and then went public with a list of former and current security and military officials she said had been plotting to kill her. At the time, she asked for the FBI to investigate the attacks.

The prospect that Bhutto's attackers were trained special forces operatives raises profound questions for America's policy of giving financial aid to Pakistan's military. Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, America has provided the Musharraf regime with more than $10 billion.

A close associate of Bhutto for more than two decades, Hussein Haqqani, yesterday said he believed Pakistan's security services were complicit in the assassination of his friend. "I don't think they were complicit, as in, they did it, I mean this as they allowed this to happen. Of course that includes the possibility of actual complicity. I think her security needs and concerns were not addressed," he told the Sun. Mr. Haqqani said he thought it was a possibility that had penetrated the security services.

Violent protests reportedly were spreading throughout Pakistan yesterday. A Pakistan expert at the Rand Corporation, Seth Jones, said he would need to study the technical details of the assassination to determine if it was an inside job. "If there is anywhere to fault the national security establishment, it would be not protecting her well enough," he said.

"Al-Qaeda" group has not yet issued an official statement claiming credit on its two largest Web forums.
A White House spokesman, Scott Stanzel, said: "Whoever perpetrated this attack is an enemy of democracy and has used a tactic which is very familiar with, and that is bombing and the taking of innocent lives to try to disrupt a democratic process." President Bush yesterday condemned what he called a "cowardly attack."

A senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Daniel Markey, who just returned from Pakistan, told reporters on a conference call yesterday that there were plenty of people around Mr. Musharraf "who were angry with Benazir Bhutto."

The assassination is particularly troubling for American policy. For the last year, the State Department in particular has tried to broker a power sharing agreement between Mr. Musharraf and Bhutto, reasoning that Mr. Musharraf alone lacked the legitimacy to wage a full military war against "Al-Qaeda."

Source: The New York Sun, New York, USA

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