ISLAMABAD/RAWALPINDI, Dec 29: A senior police officer detained in the Benazir Bhutto case has started exposing other people he says were responsible for poor security arrangements which led to her assassination in a gun-and-bomb attack outside Liaquat Bagh on Dec 27, 2007.

In his first statement since his arrest, read out by his lawyer on Wednesday, former Rawalpindi city police chief Saud Aziz said Interior Minister Rehman Malik who was in-charge of Ms Bhutto’s security was in close contact with police and it was his responsibility to stop her from standing up and looking out from her jeep.

A source close to Mr Aziz said he would soon expose more people on whose directives he and other top police officers were working at the time.

Punjab police chief Tariq Saleem Dogar said that Mr Aziz had informed him after the assassination that he had collected all evidence and that the venue of the attack had been hosed down because emotional people had started smearing their faces with blood spilled there.

Addressing a press conference in Lahore, he said Mr Aziz had also informed him through a fax that relatives of Ms Bhutto were not allowing police to get autopsy conducted.

Former CPO had told Dawn that forensic experts and investigators had collected over 35 pieces of evidence, including shells of bullets and guns used in the attack, and later arrested five suspects. He was of the view that nothing else was required to be collected from the place.

The official blamed the inadequate security arrangements made by the Pakistan Peoples’ Party for the lapse and said Mr Malik should have stopped Ms Bhutto from standing up and using the sunroof of her bullet-proof jeep to look out.

Analysts say that either the government does not want to make everything public or it is facing resistance from some quarters and is not in a position to let the investigation proceed in the right direction.

One of the main lacunas in the investigation is that the Joint Investigation Team lacks the power to include some top officers and government functionaries accused of being involved in the case.

No one who was near Ms Bhutto at the time of the attack has been made a witness in the case, including her close aide Naheed Khan, Senator Safdar Abbasi and Makhdoom Amin Fahim who were in her vehicle.

It has been observed that Ms Bhutto had no security when she left Liaquat Bagh after addressing her last public meeting and even her party’s substitute vehicle in which her security adviser Mr Malik was sitting was not in the back-up position.

According to the party arrangement, Mr Malik was the overall security in-charge but he had left the venue a few minutes before the attack. He was accompanied by presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar and Law Minister Babar Awan.

Advocate Malik Waheed Anjum, who is representing Mr Aziz, said at a press conference that the in-charge of the official security had told Mr Malik that Ms Bhutto should not come out of her vehicle while leaving Liaquat Bagh because a rally of Mian Nawaz Sharif had been attacked in the city.

The lawyer showed media personnel a statement of then SSP (operations) Yasin Farooq that was recorded by the Joint Investigation Team of the Federal Investigation Agency which restarted the investigation in August last year.

“Had the security measures planned by police been followed by Ms Bhutto, she could have survived the suicide attack,” Mr Anjum said.

He said doctors had confirmed that Ms Bhutto had died because of a head injury caused by the sunroof hatch of her vehicle when the bomber blew himself up while she was responding to slogans of her supporters.

He said the investigators had never raised any question about destruction of evidence because of the washing of the crime scene.

He said crime scenes at Karsaz and Nishtar Park in Karachi had also been hosed down after suicide attacks.

The defence lawyer said his client had been declared not guilty by Punjab police and the FIA in earlier investigation reports.

On Nov 15, the FIA accused Mr Aziz and former Rawal Town SP Khurram Shahzad of negligence.

The lawyer said most of the people killed in different suicide attacks were buried without post-mortem.

He said Ms Bhutto’s body had been examined in a public hospital and the cause of her death had been pronounced by the doctors.

He alleged that the police officers were being made scapegoat in the high-profile case.REMAND: Meanwhile, the anti-terrorism court hearing the assassination case sent Mr Aziz and Mr Shahzad to Adiyala jail on judicial remand for 14 days.

The ATC-III judge rejected a request by the JIT seeking custody of the officers for nine more days because the cellphones they were using on Dec 27, 2007, and their numbers were to be obtained from them.

The police officers will be presented in the court on Jan 12.

The ATC judge expressed his displeasure after learning that investigation officer Asghar Jatoi had written a letter to the interior ministry seeking permission to investigate the officials of intelligence agencies who were on duty on the day of Ms Bhutto’s assassination.

The investigator said in the letter that the court had asked him to investigate the intelligence officials.

The defence lawyer said the judge did not issue a show-cause notice to the FIA official after he assured the court that the mistake would not be repeated.