Why the UN report ignored conflict on autopsy
 

By Ansar Abbasi

ISLAMABAD: The UN Commission on Benazir Bhutto’s murder has not given much importance in its report to the statement of three senior officers, who had told the commission that Asif Zardari had declined to allow the police to conduct the autopsy of his slain wife on Dec 27, 2007.

Sources said at least three officers, including the then Home Secretary Punjab, Khusro Pervez, Capital Police Officer (CPO) Rawalpindi and the then District Coordination Officer, Irfan Elahi, had told the UN Commission in their respective statements that Asif Ali Zardari had stopped the police from conducting the autopsy of Benazir Bhutto.

The sources said at the Chaklala air base on the night of Dec 27, 2007, it was CPO Saud Aziz who told Asif Ali Zardari that the autopsy of Benazir’s body was to be done but Asif Zardari did not allow him to do so. On this, the then DCO Rawalpindi, Irfan Elahi, arranged a call between Asif Zardari and the then Home Secretary, Khusro Pervez, who too was refused the autopsy.

The UN report did not give any importance to these statements but reprimanded the then CPO Rawalpindi for not carrying out the autopsy, which under the law was to be carried out even if the heirs of the deceased did not agree.

Interestingly, three days later on December 31, Asif Ali Zardari had admitted that he had declined a request for a post-mortem. “It was an insult to my wife, an insult to the sister of the nation, an insult to the mother of the nation,” he said. “I know their forensic reports are useless. I refuse to give them her last remains,” the New York Times had quoted Asif Zardari as saying.

Asif Zardari’s statement in a press conference was quite forceful but ignored by the commission, which instead defended Asif Zardari and concluded that the officials were trying to shift their blame on the spouse of the deceased PPP leader.

The question of an autopsy has become central to the circumstances of Benazir Bhutto’s death because of conflicting versions put forward so far.

But one key point which has been ignored, either deliberately or otherwise, by almost all, including the PPP and Asif Zardari, is that without his permission doctors of the RGH had already split open Benazir’s chest to perform an open cardiac massage, which means they extracted her heart and tried to revive it, although unsuccessfully.

Doctors performed an operation called Thoracotomy which in medical terms is an incision into the pleural space of the chest. It is performed by a surgeon, and, rarely, by emergency physicians, to gain access to the thoracic organs, most commonly the heart, the lungs, the esophagus or thoracic aorta, or for access to the anterior spine such as is necessary for access to tumors in the spine.

Once a Thoracotomy, thought to be one of the hardest surgical incisions, was done, there was no issue of disrespect to the body left and at the same time, after the body was cut, an autopsy could have been done with little or few more procedures.

The commission in its report squarely held the CPO, Saud Aziz responsible, for his failure to do the autopsy and extraordinarily underplayed Asif Ali Zardari’s role in this regard. There is no mention of what Zardari had said on Dec 31 and also reported by the media.

Instead, the commission emphasised that on three different occasions, Professor Mussadiq asked CPO Saud Aziz for permission to conduct an autopsy on Benzir Bhutto, and the CPO refused each request.

“On the second request, CPO Saud Aziz is reported to have sarcastically asked the professor whether an FIR had been filed, a matter that the CPO should know, not the professor. DCO Elahi, who was also present outside the operating room, supported CPO Saud Aziz’s position.” The commission said it does not find that there are credible reasons for failing to carry out an autopsy on Benazir Bhutto’s body. The body had already undergone invasive medical procedures when the open heart massage was undertaken.

“If the police were genuinely waiting for Asif Zardari’s permission before requesting a post- mortem examination, they should have left Benazir Bhutto’s remains at the hospital. Instead, they moved her remains to the Chaklala Airbase, thereby rendering such an examination more difficult.”

When questioned about this, senior Punjab officials stated that the plan was to carry out the examination at the base, which also had medical facilities. However, the fact that Benazir Bhutto’s coffin was not taken to the medical facilities, but placed in a room at the base makes this assertion doubtful.

As against the commission report, one of the three officers, who had spoken to Asif Zardari, confided to The News that the arrangement was made with the help of a military hospital to carry out autopsy there but it was ignored following Asif Zardari’s refusal.

The report while referring to the communication between the Rawalpindi police and home departments of the Punjab and Sindh lamented, “the letter focuses solely on Asif Zardari’s refusal to approve an autopsy -- and portrays it in misleading terms. The letter is clearly intended to hide CPO Saud Aziz’s fundamental failure to carry out his legal obligation regarding the autopsy and, instead, to redirect the blame for this failure to Asif Zardari. The effort to pin responsibility for this failure on Asif Zardari is unacceptable.”