First Question That Needs an Answer: How Did Bhutto Die?

While riots continue across Pakistan, people are afraid to drive, and reports surface of food shortages, one of the basic questions of the last few days has not been clearly answered.  How did Benazir Bhutto die?

Look how the details coming from the government have changed in the last two days.  This was from an AP report Friday afternoon:

Bhutto was killed after a suicide attacker shot at her and then blew himself up as she left a rally, police and witnesses said. Authorities initially said she died from bullet wounds, but Dr. Mussadiq Khan, a surgeon who treated her, said Friday that she died from shrapnel that hit her on the right side of the skull.

Bhutto had no heart beat or pulse when she arrived at the hospital and doctors failed to resuscitate her, he said.

Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said he saw the medical report, and it, too, said she died from a shrapnel wound and was not shot. "No bullet was found in her body," he said.

Soomro, the prime minister, told the Cabinet on Friday that Bhutto's husband did not allow an autopsy, according to a government statement.

Note that police on the scene said she died of bullet wounds.  The government spokesman claimed that "no bullet was found in her body," as if a bullet could never go through the body, especially in the neck area.  Also note that the Interior Ministry said she died of a shrapnel wound, presumably from the flying shrapnel caused by the suicide bomber.  Finally, the accusation that Bhutto's husband didn't allow an autopsy.  

Now, here's what the Guardian reported:

Meanwhile, confusion persisted about the exact circumstances of the opposition leader's death.

The surgeon who pronounced her dead surprised many by stating that the cause of death had not been the bullets from shots heard by eyewitnesses but shrapnel from the subsequent bomb blast.

Dr Mussadiq Khan said the shrapnel hit the right side of Bhutto's skull.

Javed Iqbal Cheema, an interior ministry spokesman, appeared to immediately contradict the surgeon, saying Bhutto's death had been caused by neither shrapnel nor bullet but by Bhutto hitting the sunroof as she fell back into her jeep on hearing the gunshots.

Bhutto had no heartbeat or pulse when she arrived at the hospital where doctor's attempted to resuscitate her.

The acting Pakistani prime minister, Mohammed Mian Soomro, told the cabinet today that Bhutto's husband had asked that no autopsy be carried out, but said the authorities had proceeded with one.

The speed with which Bhutto was buried has also been questioned by lawyers calling for an international and neutral investigation.

According to this report, the surgeon said it was shrapnel—which would pierce the body—but the Interior Ministry spokesman says there were no wounds.  And the Prime Minister says that an autopsy was conducted.

This was the Times of London:

"There is no evidence of any foreign element in her body," Brigadier Cheema said. "No bullet hit her, nor any splinters hit her. Unfortunately, it was to be that way.

"I wish she had not come out of the roof top of her vehicle."

But Ms Bhutto's lawyer and a senior official in the PPP, Farooq Naik, rejected the Government's claim as "baseless".

"It is a pack of lies," he said.

"Two bullets hit her, one in the abdomen and one in the head.

"It was a serious security lapse."

At the press conference, Brigadier Cheema insisted the Government had done everything in its power to protect Ms Bhutto. He said everybody at the rally in Rawalpindi had been searched, Ms Bhutto's rostrum had been bulletproof, and "all possible security arrangements were made within the resources of the Government of Pakistan".

He added: "It pains me, I say with a lot of anguish, that we wish she had not come out of that vehicle to wave to the people."

If the reporting is accurate—and I can't vouch for it—what we have here is the Interior Ministry contradicting itself; earlier the spokesman had said it was a shrapnel wound, but later on Friday, that there were no wounds, just a blunt force trauma to her head.  And again, there's a move to deflect blame on to Bhutto for standing up in her vehicle.  

Earlier the Times had apparently reported that in her casket Bhutto's face was visible but her head and neck body were swathed to cover bullet wounds.  And today, we have this report, quoting a spokeswoman for Bhutto's PPP party:

"She was bleeding profusely, as she had received a bullet wound in her neck. My car was full of blood. Three doctors at the hospital told us that she had received bullet wounds. I was among the people who gave her a final bath. We saw a bullet wound in the back of her neck," she said. "What the government is saying is actually dangerous and nonsensical. They are pouring salt on our wounds. There are no findings, they are just lying."

The reaction from the Interior Ministry?

Although the case is "solved," Cheema said, the government has ordered judicial and police inquiries into the assassination to put a stop to "conspiracy theories and speculative reporting." Cheema also accused Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who arrived in Islamabad early Friday morning with his three children, of attempting to prevent Bhutto's official autopsy.

Obviously, someone is lying.  If the reporting is correct—and the odds are that there are some errors in some of these dispatches—what we have on one hand are police, Bhutto loyalists in her car, and doctors who treated her in the hospital saying she was shot, and reporting her body had wounds and that she bled profusely.  On the other hand, we have a government spokesman who contradicts all these details, contradicted the physician who he appears to have put forth as the official medical spokesman, and whose story has changed over the last few days.  And we have him saying there was no autopsy, but the nation's Prime Minister saying there was.