December 28, 2007
It was initially reported that Bhutto, 54, was killed on Thursday after a public rally in Rawalpindi by the bullets of an assassin who blew himself up after firing the shots.But the surgeon who operated on her, Dr Mussadiq Khan, told the Associated Press on Friday that Bhutto was killed by shrapnel from the blast -- from which at least 28 more people died and at least 100 were wounded. Khan said "no bullet was found in her body."
An account by IBNlive.com provides a murkier accounting:
Mystery shrouds the death of former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto. In an explosive revelation, Pakistan's Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz on Friday said that Bhutto did not die of bullet wounds.Nawaz said that Bhutto died from a head injury. At least seven doctors from the Rawalpindi General Hospital – where the leader was rushed immediately after the attack – say there were no bullet marks on Bhutto's body.
The doctors have submitted a report to the Pakistan government in which they say that no post-mortem was performed on Bhutto's body and they had not received any instructions to perform one.
"The report says she had head injuries – an irregular patch – and the X-ray doesn't show any bullet in the head. So it was probably the shrapnel or any other thing has struck her in her said. That damaged her brain, causing it to ooze and her death. The report categorically ssyas [sic] there's no wound other than that," Nawaz told a Pakistani news channel.
Government sources say there will be an investigation to determine why no autopsy was conducted.
These accounts from doctors seem to directly conflict with that of John Moore, a Getty Images photographer at the scene that stated clearly (audio & slideshow) that Bhutto was shot and went down into the armored vehicle before the assassin detonated his suicide bomb.
Transcript:
...suddenly—well, I turned around and heard three shots go off, and saw her go down, um, fall down through the sunroof, down into the car, and just at that moment, I raised my camera and started photographing with the high-speed motor drive and that's how I was able to capture some of the explosion, and the aftermath...
Other witnesses at the scene concur with Moore:
Three to five shots were fired at her, witnesses said. She was hit in the neck and slumped back in the vehicle. Blood poured from her head, and she never regained consciousness. Moments after the shooting, there was a huge explosion to the left of the vehicle.
A pistol was recovered from the site of the assassination by Pakistani police and is assumed to be the assassination weapon, but the likelihood of a person firing with a pistol rapid-fire from an estimated 50 yards while in a crowd, and hitting his target seems remote.
This would seem to bring us back to the irregular patch on Bhutto's head once again:
"The report says she had head injuries – an irregular patch – and the X-ray doesn't show any bullet in the head. So it was probably the shrapnel or any other thing has struck her in her said. That damaged her brain, causing it to ooze and her death. The report categorically ssyas [sic] there's no wound other than that," Nawaz told a Pakistani news channel.
If the multiple eyewitnesses were correct and Bhutto was back down inside the armored vehicle before the suicide bomber detonated his explosives, then there is little possibility that she was killed by shrapnel. There is also little reason to suspect that the seven doctors who examined her in the IBNlive.com article would lie about there being no signs of a bullet wound.
So what killed Benizer Bhutto? What could cause blunt-force trauma severe enough to kill the former Prime Minister, and occur before the bomb detonated, at which point multiple witnesses state she was already back inside the armored vehicle?
While merely speculating, I think that when shots were fired (they missed), her security detail pulled her back inside the vehicle quickly, and she probably hit the back of her head on the sunroof edge as she was pulled in.
That would seem to account for the lack of wounds other than blunt force trauma, though it would be very hard to prove without an autopsy that was never performed.
Update: The U.K. Sun seems to have come to an identical conclusion. CNN has the story as well.
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