'Bhutto was targeted using laser beam'

ISLAMABAD: The controversy over former premier Benazir Bhutto's assassination has taken another turn with a section of her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) claiming she was targeted with sophisticated "laser beam technology".

Bhutto's wounds were caused not by bullets but by some sort of laser weapon, 'The Nation' newspaper said quoting sources in the PPP.

When Bhutto was admitted to Rawalpindi General Hospital shortly after the fatal attack on her on December 27, doctor Musaddiq Khan, who treated her, told a PPP leader that he had seen "such a case for the first time in his life", sources said.

Bhutto's wounds were not caused by bullets and she had died before reaching the hospital. A part of her brain and blood had spilled out from her head, they quoted the doctor as saying.
      
The sources also claimed both the gunshots and the bomb blast in the attack on Bhutto "were a decoy to hide the real shooters".

The paper further quoted the sources as saying that the militant leader Baitullah Mehsud and the Taliban, blamed for her assassination by the government, did not have such technology.
      
Mehsud had sent two messages to Bhutto after the suicide bombing of her motorcade in Karachi on October 19 in which he said that he had no hostility against her and would not make any attempt to kill her, they said.

The PPP sources said after the suicide attack, the "ambulance also picked up a dead body behind the stage of Liaquat Bagh", the venue of an election rally that Bhutto had addressed.

Bhutto was scheduled to meet two US lawmakers after the Liaquat Bagh rally at 9:30 pm. In this meeting, she was about to expose the rigging plans of the government in the forthcoming polls, they said.

Bhutto usually used two bulletproof vehicles and often changed cars during a journey if she received an important call. When the attack occurred, there was a distance of 20 to 30 metres between these two vehicles.

At the time of the attack, Bhutto and PPP leaders Makhdoom Amin Fahim, Nahid Khan and Safdar Abbasi were sitting in one bulletproof car while spokesman Farhatullah Babar, Babar Awan and Bhutto's security adviser Rehman Malik were in the other car, sources said.
      
They also said that two wills prepared by Bhutto were presented in the meeting of the PPP's top leadership. Both wills were written by Bhutto and one was about her party while the other related to her personal property.

Bhutto's close aide Sherry Rehman has claimed Bhutto was shot in the head and rejected as "absolute nonsense" the government's contention that she died of a skull fracture during the suicide attack in Rawalpindi.