ASIA/PAKISTAN - Bhatti’s Murder: the "main person behind the crime" has been killed, the perpetrators are being chased, but ambiguity remains

Lahore (Agenzia Fides) - With the killing of Hakimullah Mehsud, leader of the "Pakistani Talibans", the militant movement which is the most serious threat to national security, "who was the man behind the killing of the Minister for minorities Shabhaz Bhatti", notes an authoritative source of Fides in Pakistan. Mehsud, according to U.S. military sources, was killed two days ago by a U.S. drone in North Waziristan, a tribal region near the Afghan border. Although the Talibans have denied this, U.S. intelligence sources say that the killing is "highly likely". Mehsuad was the leader of the movement "Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan" (TTP), which left a leaflet at the scene of a crime when the Catholic Shabhaz Bhatti, Federal Minister for Minority Affairs was killed on March 3, 2011 in Islamabad .
In past days, the Council of APMA ("All Pakistan Minorities Alicance", founded by Bhatti), which met in Sindh, again called on the Interior Minister Rehman Malik to arrest and put on trial Bhatti’s killers.
However, note sources of Fides, "the government has shown ambiguity on the matter": the Minister Malik has recently attributed the crime to the armed underground movement "Sipah-e-Sahaba" (SSP), claiming that the killers have fled to Middle East . He had previously claimed the responsibility to the movement Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), then the underground group "Punjabi Taliban", or the "313 Brigade" of Al Qaeda.
"Bhatti's murder has shaken the entire world, but there is still confusion about whose is responsible", notes the source of Fides, condemning "the contradictory versions of government officials". "Not surprisingly, the surveys can be biased by special interests", he says. In past months two Taliban militants had been indicated Malik Abid and Ziaur Rehman as the murderers, then they escaped to the UAE or Sri Lanka. The two have been identified not by eyewitnesses, but by the reporting of an imam in Karachi. "What stands - said the source of Fides - is that, in the current turmoil, institutional conflicts and instability that characterize Pakistan, the government does not seem to have any precise strategies, despite the proclamations and verbal guarantees, it has not so far produced concrete facts concerning Bhatti’s murder". (PA) (Agenzia Fides 17/01/2012)