Bhutto panel to question senior Pakistan army officer

A panel of Pakistani civilians is to question a senior army officer over the murder of former PM Benazir Bhutto in 2007, officials say.No serving army officer has ever faced a civilian inquiry in Pakistan before.
The committee was set up by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to investigate questions raised by a UN inquiry into the assassination.It said the murder site had been hosed down too quickly by police, apparently on the orders of Maj Gen Nadeem Ijaz.The panel will interrogate a number of police officials as well as Gen Ijaz, who was then chief of the army's Military Intelligence (MI).
Preventable?
The committee is led by Cabinet Secretary Chaudhry Abdur Rauf. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial Home Secretary Fayyaz Toru and an army officer, Maj Gen Sajjad Ghani, are among its members.The committee is led by Cabinet Secretary Chaudhry Abdur Rauf. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial Home Secretary Fayyaz Toru and an army officer, Maj Gen Sajjad Ghani, are among its members.It was formed to determine why the crime scene was hosed down by police soon after Ms Bhutto's assassination in December 2007, and to submit a report to the prime minister within a week.
The committee met late on Monday evening to work out its terms of reference and to issue summonses to officers.
The UN report quotes at least two sources who suggest that top police official Saud Aziz - who ordered the hosing down of the crime scene - was not acting "independently" and was being leaned on by the army.
Ms Bhutto was assassinated in a gun and bomb attack in Rawalpindi soon after addressing an election rally.
The military government at the time, headed by President Pervez Musharraf, blamed militant leader Baitullah Mehsud for ordering the assassination, a charge which he denied.
Many in Ms Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) believe that the country's powerful security establishment may have been involved in eliminating Ms Bhutto.
The UN report published earlier this month said the assassination of Ms Bhutto could have been prevented and the subsequent inquiry was bungled.