Four cardinal principles of security violated, say Indian experts

Praveen Swami

New Delhi: While Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States, Mahmud Ali Durrani, maintains that Pervez Musharraf’s government provided “unprecedented security” to Benazir Bhutto, Indian security experts disagree.

Speaking to The Hindu, a senior Special Protection Group official who reviewed available footage of the attack described Ms. Bhutto’s security as “dismal, almost as bad as if it was designed to facilitate her assassination.” Set up in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, the elite SPG provides security to both serving and past Indian Prime Ministers and their families.

The content of an e-mail sent in October 2007 by Ms Bhutto to an American confidant, Mark Siegel, who has been interviewed by CNN, was referred to the Indian experts. In the e-mail, she charged President Pervez Musharraf with failing to upgrade her security despite a near-successful assassination attempt. She complained that she had been “made to feel insecure by his minions and there is no way what is happening in terms of stopping me from taking private cars or using tinted windows or giving jammers or four police mobiles cld [could] happen without him.”

The SPG official is of the firm opinion that the upgrades might have saved Ms Bhutto’s life. According to him, four cardinal principles of security for high-risk targets were violated in the course of Ms. Bhutto’s campaign rally at the Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi:

Access-control protocols common among security services worldwide were violated. All those allowed close proximity with Ms Bhutto’s person, vehicles, or campaign podium should have been identified and screened long before her rally.

Long, medium and close-range security cordons should have been in place to ensure that all those close enough to launch an attack on Ms Bhutto had passed through at least three layers of physical frisking and metal-detector searches.

Technologies to prevent remote-controlled bomb detonation and detect concealed explosives should have been in place, even though these would not have deterred this particular attack. In addition, incognito guards should have been infiltrated into the crowd around Ms Bhutto to immediately interdict an attack. This might well have saved her life.

Ms Bhutto’s vehicle should have been shielded from the crowd by the presence of other escort cars, which would have rendered it more difficult for an attacker to find a suitable line of fire. This was indeed one of the complaints listed in her e-mail.

“We’ve repeatedly rehearsed scenarios similar to that played out in Rawalpindi,” the SPG official noted, “and have found that the elaborate systems we have in place to protect the Prime Minister of India are the sole means to defeat them. My assessment is that it is impossible for such an attack to have been prevented other than by a specialist security service.”

More likely than not, the SPG official noted, “the terrorist group that attacked Ms Bhutto had carried out several reconnaissance operations at past congregations. They would have noted that she often waved at crowds from her car’s sun-roof, and identified this as a weakness. However, Pakistan’s intelligence services should have warned her to end this habit, and also looked out for cells conducting reconnaissance.”

Another expert, an officer responsible for the security of a high-risk target in Jammu & Kashmir, noted that Indian politicians were routinely protected amidst large, unruly crowds – a factor some have said facilitated the successful terrorist attack on Ms Bhutto.

(http://www.hindu.com)