FROM a strictly legal point of view, the UN report on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto is deficient. The manner in which the report has been drafted is not consistent with the way in which documents probing high-profile events are prepared.

There are no annexes and no material listed to show on what the reports and conclusions are based. There are no statements by witnesses or by those people interviewed to ascertain whether or not the opinion of the authors is based on facts. In fact not even the names of the 250 people interviewed have been included. One cannot ascertain whether the relevant people were interviewed and others left out.

Opinions and conclusions in such a report must be based on identified material which is missing. There are no footnotes and often the report refers to anonymous sources. The UN report has given more weight to requests of anonymity by witnesses than shown regard for transparency. In that sense, the report itself belies its purpose which was to make an objective and transparent assessment of the circumstances in which Ms Bhutto was assassinated. The report falls short of the standards that people had expected from a UN commission.

The mandate given to the commission was “to determine the facts and circumstances of the assassination of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto”. It was not to write a journalistic piece on the historical background leading to the assassination. A thorough finding was expected that would help in the identification of suspects. The report has attempted to determine facts that are clearly extraneous and least relevant to Benazir Bhutto's assassination. It contains the finding that the bulk of anti-Indian activity was and remains the work of groups with close ties with the ISI and that they are being used in Afghanistan and Kashmir. This may or may not be the case, but how is it relevant to a UN report focusing on Benazir Bhutto's assassination?

Was the mandate to find facts which make Pakistan a threat to the region's stability? Was the mandate to comment on Pakistan's intervention in Kashmir and Afghanistan? Was the mandate to determine the presence of Al Qaeda and other non-state actors on the soil of Pakistan? If not, then why have extensive discussions been devoted to these issues?

The report in the chapter relating to threats and possible culpabilities discusses threats from the establishment (armed forces, intelligence agencies, etc.) in about 10 paragraphs. It is basically an exercise to link non-state actors to the establishment on the admitted basis of a hypothesis. After one goes through these 10 paragraphs, one ends up believing that the Pakistani establishment is hand in glove with non-state actors and out to destabilise the democratic set-up and further destabilise the region. While everyone believes that the Pakistani establishment needs to discipline itself and depart from past practices the point is whether this was the mandate given to the commission.

The terms of reference of the commission expressly authorised taking testimonies, whereas, the report does not even mention if it has taken a single written testimony from any person. Instead the inquiry commission changed the format of 'testimony' to 'interview', something that it never had the formal authority to do unless it sought explicit amendments to the terms of reference.

How does one check the commission wrote what it had recorded? Not that one doubts the integrity of its members, but propriety demands that the material, testimonies and documents that form the basis of the opinions and observations in the report are referred to or at least identified so that the reader is satisfied that the findings are well supported.

The commission chose to be selective in interviewing people, something that contradicts the essence of transparency and due process. Ideally, the members should have issued an advertisement inviting people to volunteer any information that they may have had about the assassination. Instead, they interviewed a few and left out several others who later came on television complaining that their statements would have had greater relevancy because they possessed certain knowledge. The report fails to give reasons for why it interviewed a few and left out others, when the terms of reference made clear the need for necessary evidence.

People were expecting that the report would help them assess which version of events was more accurate. In fact confusion is further compounded, and at the end of the report the reader is left with the same questions that he had when he started to read the report to find answers. Further, it allows space to everyone to give his own version. Hence in TV debates, one notices everyone relying on the respective contents of the report to argue his version against another.

The only positive outcome of the report is that its findings put pressure on the government to carry out a serious and credible investigation and exclude none and include all those who are suspected in any way. The report can have serious legal implications for Pakistan's long-term interest regarding the country's various institutions and their alleged regional and international roles.

These findings are considered final because the report was commissioned under the UN Charter by the secretary general and has been submitted to the UN Security Council. The commission may have ceased to exist, but the report continues to be a living document and the UN can use or misuse the determination of various facts made in the report in a manner which may not be in Pakistan's interest.

The writer is president of the Research Society of International Law and an advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

ahmersoofi@hotmail.com