ISI officers to be quizzed in Bhutto murder case

Several high-ranking officers of the Pakistan's Military Intelligence and spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence would be quizzed in connection with the 2007 assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto, authorities said.

Federal Investigation Agency prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfiqar said that two top police officials arrested on Wednesday on the orders of an anti-terrorism court had named four MI and Inter-Services Intelligence officers they were in touch with at the time of Bhutto's assassination.

"These are people from MI and ISI. They (the two arrested police officers) have named them in court too. In the light of this, we will make them part of this investigation," Zulfiqar told reporters outside a court in Rawalpindi.

These intelligence officers are of the rank of Major and Colonel, he said. Zulfiqar was speaking after the anti-terrorism court remanded former Rawalpindi police chief Saud Aziz and former Superintendent of Police Khurram Shahzad to the custody of the FIA for six days.

When the two police officers were presented in court today, they told the judge that they had been in touch with two officers each of the MI and ISI at the time of Bhutto's assassination on December 27, 2007. The two police officials were yesterday arrested in the courtroom on the orders of the anti-terrorism judge conducting the trial of suspects accused of involvement in the assassination.

The FIA has named them as accused in a supplementary chargesheet. Aziz and Shahzad have been accused of negligence in providing security to Bhutto, destroying vital evidence by hosing down the crime scene within hours of the assassination and tampering with records of telephone calls made on the day Bhutto was killed.

Prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfiqar said the FIA's investigation is not yet complete and sleuths will make efforts to recover the personal mobile phones of the two police officers so that forensic analysis could be done to trace incoming and outgoing calls on the day of the assassination. Investigators had only recovered the official mobile phones of the two police officers, Zulfiqar said.

Any "co-conspirators" identified by Aziz and Shahzaf will also be made part of the probe, he added. The anti-terrorism court is conducting the trial of five suspects linked to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan who have been charged with involvement in Bhutto's assassination. The next hearing of the case has been scheduled for January 7.

The report of a UN commission that probed the assassination said Bhutto's killing could have been prevented. The report criticised the police's decision to hose down the crime scene, and said its failure to collect and preserve evidence "inflicted irreparable damage to the investigation."