FORMER PAKISTAN PRIME MINISTER BHUTTO KARACHI

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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

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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

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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