Source: Reuters

By Faisal Aziz

GARHI KHUDA BAKSH, Pakistan, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Chants of Koranic verses and sombre hymns resonated throughout Benazir Bhutto’s ancestral village in southern Pakistan on Thursday as thousands gathered at the assassinated former prime minister’s tomb to mark a 40th and final day of mourning.

Conspiracy theories still swirl over who was behind the gun and suicide bomb attack that killed the opposition leader in the garrison town of Rawalpindi on Dec. 27.

Controversy even rages over whether Bhutto, the most charismatic Pakistani politician of the last 20 years, was killed by a bullet or by a concussive injury caused by the bomb detonated after an assassin shot at her from close range.

She was buried a day later, without an autopsy, at the imposing mausoleum she had built at Garhi Khuda Baksh in Sindh province for her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first popularly elected prime minister.

The father was toppled and hanged by the military in the late 1970s, but the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) still draws on his populist appeal.

Huge portraits of Bhutto hung alongside the red, green and black tricolour of the PPP in and around the marble tomb. Outside, crowds assembled in a sprawling ground where loudspeakers played Bhutto’s speeches and mourning hymns.

“The entire Bhutto family has rendered sacrifices for this country. It’s our responsibility that we should support and pay tribute to this great family,” said Majid Soomro, a farmer in his late 40s, who had come from a nearby village.

Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto’s husband and de facto leader of the PPP, arrived at the mausoleum to pray at the grave, strewn with rose petals. None of the couple’s three children, who all live abroad, were present.

Zardari this week scotched talk that he planned to put himself forward as a candidate for the premiership. The PPP’s likely choice will be its deputy chairman, Makhdoom Amin Fahim.

SYMPATHY WAVE

After Bhutto’s death, the party named her 19-year-old son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari as PPP chairman and Zardari as co-chairman, in accordance with the slain leader’s will written on Oct. 16, just before she returned to Pakistan after eight years in self-exile.

Bhutto was hounded into exile by corruption charges levelled by the government of Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister President Pervez Musharraf ousted in a coup in 1999.

Musharraf had issued an amnesty to allow Bhutto to return and there was speculation she would work with the unpopular president if she became prime minister following an election that was due last month.

The vote was put off until Feb. 18 because of the assassination, and Bhutto’s political enemies will be hoping that a wave of sympathy for the PPP has begun to subside, although there was no chance of that in the party’s Sindh heartland.

“Our vote is for Benazir Bhutto, and her son should become prime minister,” said Ghous Bux, 25, who came with his friends from Larkana to pay his last respects. Oxford University student, Bilawal, has said he planned to pursue his mother’s legacy after completing his studies.

Bhutto was killed as she stood to wave to supporters from the sun roof of her car after an election rally in Rawalpindi.

Soon after her assassination, the government accused Baitullah Mehsud, an al Qaeda-linked militant commander based in South Waziristan tribal region on the Afghan border, of killing pro-Western Bhutto.

But a poll conducted by Gallup Pakistan found that nearly half of Pakistanis believe government agencies or politicians allied to Musharraf were involved in her assassination.

Musharraf has dismissed these accusations and the government asked Britain’s Scotland Yard police to help in the investigations. The British police are expected to send a report to the government on Friday.

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Tags: Assassination, Benazir Bhutto, Elections, Garhi Khuda Baksh