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RAWALPINDI,
Pakistan—Pakistani
authorities have pressured the medical personnel who tried
to save Benazir Bhutto’s life to remain silent about what
happened in her final hour and have removed records of her
treatment from the facility, according to doctors.
In
interviews, doctors who were at Bhutto’s side at
Rawalpindi General Hospital said they were under extreme
pressure not to share details about the nature of the
injuries that the opposition leader sustained in an attack
on December 27.
“The
government took all the medical records right after Ms.
Bhutto’s time of death was read out,” said a visibly
shaken doctor who spoke on condition of anonymity because
of the sensitivity of the issue. Sweating and putting his
head in his hands, he said: “Look, we have been told by
the government to stop talking. And a lot of us feel this
is a disgrace.”
The
doctors now find themselves at the center of a political
firestorm over the circumstances of Bhutto’s death. The
government has said Bhutto, 54, was killed after the force
of a suicide bombing caused her head to slam against the
lever of her vehicle’s sunroof. Bhutto’s supporters have
pointed to video footage, including a new amateur video
released Monday, as proof that she was killed by gunfire.
The truth
about what happened has serious implications in Pakistan.
The ability of a gunman to fire at Bhutto from close
range, as alleged by her supporters, would suggest that an
assassin was able to breach government security in a city
that serves as headquarters of the Pakistani military,
bolstering her supporters’ claims that the government
failed to provide her with adequate protection.
If a
gunman were to blame, it would also raise questions as to
why the government has for days insisted otherwise.
Bhutto’s supporters have called for an international
investigation.
The
government has repeatedly dismissed allegations of a
cover-up, and some US medical experts, when asked Monday
to review an official hospital description of her wounds,
speculated that a skull fracture and not a bullet wound
killed Bhutto.
The
medical personnel in
Rawalpindi,
meanwhile, have mostly remained quiet.
“Our
doctors have become caught up in this very emotional and
political issue,” said Fayyaz Ahmed Khan, the doctors’
supervisor at Rawalpindi General. “It’s a terrible
position for our medical professions to be in.”
A newly
released video that was obtained by Britain’s Channel 4
and broadcast Monday cast doubt on the government’s claims
and appeared to corroborate witnesses’ stories. The
footage appeared to show a gunman and a suspected suicide
bomber approaching Bhutto’s sport-utility vehicle. Seconds
later, the video showed gunfire and Bhutto’s hair and
scarf being blown back just as a bomb explodes.
Government
officials identified Baitullah Mehsud, a pro-Taliban
commander in the restive South Waziristan region, as the
organizer of Bhutto’s killing. But some observers said the
government has been too quick to blame the attack on the
Taliban.
Jameel
Yusuf, a lead investigator in the 2002 disappearance of
American journalist Daniel Pearl in
Karachi,
said the Pakistani government had blundered badly by not
sealing off the crime scene. Moments after Bhutto was
killed, workers hosed down the blood at the blast site
before any evidence could be collected.
“When
you’re dealing with a murder of this nature, you need to
have forensics,” Yusuf said.
Several
witnesses say they have yet to be interviewed by the
police.
Kamran
Nazir, 19, was badly injured at the rally by shrapnel. On
Monday he was at Rawalpindi General, his father at his
bedside. His breathing was labored, and the top layer of
skin on his face was singed off. He said he was shocked
that the police had not questioned him.
“Why is no
one asking me what happened? It’s important to know the
truth,” he said as his father’s eyes went wet.
“The truth
is, there really is no investigation at all,” said Babar
Awan, a top official in Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party
who said he saw Bhutto’s body after the attack and
identified two clearly defined bullet wounds—entry and
exit points.
He said
that the principal professor of surgery at the hospital,
Muhammad Mussadiq Khan, was “extremely nervous, but
eventually told me that Bhutto had died of a bullet
wound.”
“Why was
this man so nervous?” Awan said. “He told me firsthand he
was under pressure not to talk about how she died.”
Reached at
his home in
Islamabad,
Khan declined to comment, saying he worked for a
government hospital and was trying to “do my duty and
remain a doctor.” In published reports in the
English-language newspaper Dawn, Khan has changed his
story on multiple occasions, first speaking about bullet
wounds and later backing away from those comments.
Over the
weekend, Athar Minallah, a board member at Rawalpindi
General, e-mailed journalists Bhutto’s medical report. The
report, which was separate from documents that doctors say
have been confiscated, describes a deep wound in Bhutto’s
head that was leaking brain matter.
No
“foreign body” was found in the wound, the report says,
and no exit wound was recorded. But in an x-ray of
Bhutto’s skull, the doctors identified “two to three tiny
radio-densities.” Minallah said in an interview that the
report suggested those were bullet fragments.
US medical
experts said the “radio-densities” were probably not
bullets.
Thomas
Scalea, physician in chief of the shock trauma center at
the University of Maryland Medical Center, said that while
there was no evidence of a bullet wound, he was also
perplexed by how the blunt force of Bhutto’s head against
an object could have caused brain damage severe enough to
kill her so quickly.
“The whole
thing strikes me as very unusual,” said Scalea.
Bhutto’s
widower and the interim leader of her party, Asif Ali
Zardari, has requested an investigation into her death by
the United Nations.
President
Pervez Musharraf’s spokesman, retired Gen. Rashid Qureshi,
said Musharraf is “considering” an offer from the British
government to assist in an investigation. Qureshi said
Bhutto’s husband bore responsibility for the controversy,
because he had denied the government permission to conduct
an autopsy immediately after Bhutto’s death, on the
grounds that it could not be trusted.
“The body
can be exhumed now if the family allows,” Qureshi said.
“There’s no problem with that.” |
