U.N.: Benazir Bhutto Didn't Have To Die

Pakistan seems like a good place to plan a political assassination. A U.N. commission report into the 2007 assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, who was shot and then blown up at a rally in Rawalpindi, found that President Pervez Musharraf's government "failed profoundly" in its efforts to protect her and investigate her murder. According to the report, the federal, state, and local authorities knew that Bhutto faced "extraordinary fresh and urgent security risks" but did not take the necessary security measures. Pakistan's intelligence agencies probably interfered with the investigation—the crime scene was hosed down immediately after the explosion, an act the report says could not have taken place without the knowledge of higher authorities. Pakistani authorities also amassed a "manifestly inadequate" collection of 23 pieces of evidence in a case that "should have resulted in a collection of thousands of pieces," an oversight that the report called "deliberate."