Breakthrough in Benazir case?

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More than three years after the tragic killing of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007, Interior Minister Rehman Malik has made the sensational revelation that her murderers have been captured and are in the custody of the authorities. Speaking to party workers in Gujjar Khan, Malik claimed that the mystery behind her murder had finally been solved and that the details of the conspiracy would soon be unveiled before the Central Executive Committee of the PPP. Although revelations of similar breakthroughs have periodically been made by top government figures, including assertions that they know the identity of Benazir’ killers, Rehman Malik’s latest statement goes even further by claiming the perpetrators are in custody. The lack of progress in the case has been a cause of much bitterness among the party rank and file and has given the opposition an opportunity to taunt the government for its failure to make headway even in a case involving its own leader and two-time prime minister.

Malik’s statement may have raised hopes, but there are still many questions that remain unanswered. Sceptics who have been here before will need to know much more before they are satisfied. The decision to reveal the identity of the killers to the PPP CEC rather than to the public has also raised many eyebrows. The same tactic was used once more in the past, and party chairperson Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s absence from the country was then the excuse for putting the revelations on hold. Nothing more was subsequently heard on that particular lead. Meanwhile, in another development, an Anti Terrorism Court in Lahore on Saturday ordered the FIA to contact Interpol and speed up extradition proceedings so that former dictator Pervez Musharraf, who was in power at the time of Benazir’s assassination, can be brought home to face trial for the murder.

The country needs to know the truth about who killed Benazir Bhutto. It has waited patiently for three years to get to the bottom of a grisly incident that cruelly snatched away one of its most formidable leaders. It expects those who never fail to pay lip service to her legacy not to squander more time and single-mindedly pursue her killers and bring them to justice. It can only be hoped that the interior minister’s revelations have weight in them this time round. The Benazir assassination must not be allowed to be filed away as yet another unsolved mystery like other similar high profile murders littering the country’s political landscape.