FORMER PAKISTAN PRIME MINISTER BHUTTO KARACHI

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ISLAMABAD 004494 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/19/2017 TAGS: ASEC PGOV PINR PK PREL PTER CASC SUBJECT: FORMER PAKISTAN PRIME MINISTER BHUTTO KARACHI ATTACK Classified By: Ambassador Anne W. Patterson, Reasons 1.4 (b),(d) ¶1. (C) Following is a description of the investigation to date provided by the Ministry of Interior to the RSO. ¶2. (C) RSO met with the Secretary of the Ministry of Interior (MOI),Kamal Shah, the morning of October 19 to discuss the attack in Karachi on the motorcade of former Prime Minister (PM) of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto. During a 45-minute conversation, and between his many other interruptions and phone calls, Kamal described what he knew about the attack and when the RSO had a question, Kamal picked up the phone and obtained the answer. The following comments are the summary of relevant information to date regarding the attack as provided by the Ministry's top Police Official. ¶3. (C) At the request of the former PM, the MOI provided a dedicated Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) as the Security Officer-in-Charge for Bhutto,s visit. This SSP was requested by name by Bhutto and the MOI complied with her request and sent him to Karachi a week ahead of the arrival to deal with the security issues. Based on a previous threat by Baitullah Mehsud against Bhutto, the MOI issued an order to develop and provide a plan with all security elements to make the event incident free. Two days later, a Source report provided by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),alleged that the specific threat to the former PM was from Al-Qaeda and Taliban elements. Secretary Shah showed RSO the ISI Source Report but the RSO SIPDIS did not have the opportunity to read the entire document. ¶4. (C) Based on this ISI threat report, Secretary Shah advised the Sindh government and police officials as well as all other provincial leaders of the threat and directed them to increase their efforts and resources toward this threat. Shah then spoke with the Home Secretary for Sindh regarding the use of Electronic Countermeasures (ECMs) in the motorcade on the former PM's vehicles. The Home Secretary was in favor so Shah next requested specific authorization from the Office of the President for their use and received it. Two ECMs were provided and placed on her vehicle. ECMs are designed to block the signal emitted from a radio-frequency transmitter or a cell phone detonator device but has no effect on a hard-wired bomb or a suicide device. The Office of the Minister of Interior as well as the SSP assigned to protect former PM Bhutto, requested that the former PM not follow her plan for a 12-hour slow-moving motorcade due to the defined specific threat and even offered helicopter resources to facilitate her movement. The former PM rejected the offer and accused them of trying to hamper her welcome home. ¶5. (C) The Police physically blocked all access roads onto the route the former PM's entourage would take, with the exception of authorized Pakistan People's Party (PPP) officials. Though estimates of the crowd gathered to celebrate the return of the former PM range from 150,000 to 2 million, Secretary Shah advised the RSO that his Intelligence personnel working the crowd estimated the crowd to be around 150,000 but not more than 200,000. ¶6. (C) The protective detail around Ms. Bhutto was set up with police protective vans and foot personnel on all four sides of the large semi-armored truck that the former PM was traveling in. The attack came from the left. Two explosions were heard. The first was the lesser of the explosions and was identified as a grenade thrown to initially kill the police on that side, create chaos, and open the police cordon around the truck so that the suicide vested bomber could penetrate the cordon all the way to the truck. Luckily for the former PM, the police recovered quickly, filling in the broken cordon and blocking the path of the suicide bomber. The bomber seeing that he was not going to make it any closer, detonated his 15 to 20 kilograms (33 to 44 lbs) of high explosives. 18 police died in the explosions and total numbers as identified by physical count by the police stands at this reporting as 133 dead and 263 wounded. A question regarding the second explosion being a car bomb instead of a vest bomb was answered when they found no road crater at the ISLAMABAD 00004494 002 OF 002 detonation site and instead found a head, suspected as being that of the vest bomber. ¶7. (C) The numbers of dead will undoubtedly change as the seriously wounded succumb to their wounds. The Mission and specifically the Consulate General in Karachi, will update information as it becomes available. PATTERSON