ISLAMABAD: Pakistani police arrested Wednesday two senior police officers for alleged dereliction of duty over the 2007 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, a prosecutor said. Bhutto was assassinated almost exactly three years ago in a gun and suicide attack after addressing an election campaign rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad, on Dec. 27, 2007. In April, a UN panel accused the government of failing to provide Bhutto with adequate protection and said investigations were hampered by intelligence agencies and other officials who impeded “an unfettered search for the truth”. A Rawalpindi court this month issued warrants for the arrest of Saud Aziz, who was city police chief at the time of the killing, and Khurram Shahzad, another senior policeman for their “failure” to protect Bhutto. The pair were arrested at the court on the sidelines of a trial of five alleged Taliban militants detained in the weeks after the assassination. “Both of the police officers have been arrested. The court rejected their application for bail and the judge said ‘this was their duty to carry out the post-mortem',” special prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali said. He said the officers were also accused of a security breach that failed to protect Bhutto from attack and for taking the controversial decision to hose down the scene of the killing, destroying key evidence. – Agence France
