Who killed Benazir Bhutto

There are, broadly speaking, two views about what happened that day.

Benazir Bhutto’s supporters maintain she was shot and that there were multiple attackers.

The Pakistani authorities say the explosion knocked her head against the lever of the escape hatch.Bhutto’s supporters want to establish that there was a sophisticated, officially sponsored conspiracy; the state prefers the idea of a crude but unpreventable attack by Islamic militants.

Certainly, when Bhutto died, there were shots followed by an explosion. The pictures suggest that a bullet hit her and that she fell into the vehicle before the bomb went off. It wasn’t just that her headscarf moved after the second shot.

Her movements weren’t consistent with someone ducking a bullet: it looks as if she was already dead, or at least seriously injured, when she fell.

The doctors who tried to revive her failed to resolve the issue. They have given various accounts but their evidence is of limited use because they didn’t perform a proper autopsy.

There were questions and conspiracy theories about the lack of a post-mortem, but the issue subsided in political terms when her husband, Asif Zardari, was offered one, but said it wouldn’t be necessary.

Before her murder, Bhutto had written a number of emails naming people whom she believed wanted to kill her. Seemingly anticipating the story that would be constructed after her death, she said she wanted to make it clear that if she were killed the blame should be ascribed not to the Taliban or al-Qaida but to her enemies in the Pakistani establishment

In the weeks before her assassination, Bhutto had every reason to believe she would be killed. The failed attempt in Karachi made it clear that the jihadi leadership was willing and able to deploy its most powerful weapon – suicide bombers – against her. I and a couple of other journalists met her a few hours after that attack: the conversation was maudlin and filled with the thought that she couldn’t go on being so lucky. She fully understood her situation but accepted it. Partly she seemed to consider it a matter of fate, but perhaps she was also trying to atone for her sins. Her Swiss bank accounts were filled with millions of dollars of ill-gotten gains made during her two governments.

What a desperatly sad tale, I know people who were at University with her at Oxford and they me what a vibrant and viviacious young woman she was.