British intel monitored his phone contacts with suspects in UK
British intelligence officers in Pakistan have discovered that Benazir Bhutto's assassin had "regular telephone contacts" with al-Qaida suspects in Britain.
The calls were made from Karachi and Islamabad to mobile phones in Leeds and Bradford, according to MI6. The final call came from an area close to Liaquat Park in Rawalpindi where Bhutto was gunned down.
The calls were first monitored after an assassination attempt was made on Bhutto last October. MI6 agents were in the crowd at Karachi Airport to welcome her.
"They were appalled at the lack of security provided for her," said a London intelligence source.
John Scarlett, the head of MI6, recommended to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown that he suggest to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf the SAS should be allowed to reinforce Bhutto's bodyguards.
"The president refused, on the grounds that Pakistan did not want foreign troops serving in the country," claimed the intelligence source.
But the MI6 officers continued to gather details of the calls. They are described as "clear evidence that Benazir Bhutto's life was in increasing danger," said the London intelligence source.
Details of all the calls were passed by MI6 to Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence Service, the ISIS. They will fuel the fury of the Bhutto family and her supporters that little attempt was made to protect her by the all-powerful military and ISIS who opposed her bid to replace Musharraf.
At Musharraf's invitation, a four-man team from Scotland Yard's anti-terror squad have flown to Pakistan to begin their own investigation into the assassination. But they have been told they will work only as "support" to ISIS - an organization long suspected of being staffed by al-Qaida sympathizers.
However, the Scotland Yard team will be able to call on a joint MI6/CIA unit based in Islamabad that Musharraf allowed to be set up after the 9/11 attacks. It is staffed by hand-picked Pakistani intelligence officers who have been trained at the MI6 intelligence school at Fort Monkton, near Portsmouth, England.
The unit is equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance technology and has direct access to NSA satellite images. It operates outside ISIS control and reports only to its senior MI6/CIA officers.
While the unit's primary brief is to locate al-Qaida extremists operating out of Pakistan, since the Bhutto assassination, her murder investigation has become a prime target.
Gordon Thomas is the author of "Inside British Intelligence" to be published later this year.
Gordon Thomas, is the author of Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad, the new edition of which was published in January 2007. He specialises in international intelligence matters.
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