ISLAMABAD, April 28 Maj-Gen Nadeem Ijaz, a former director-general of the Military Intelligence, has rejected as baseless insinuations that he had ordered the hosing down of the site of Benazir Bhutto's assassination on Dec 27, 2007.

According to sources, the ex-MI chief submitted on Wednesday a detailed statement, along with some documents, to the three-member committee investigating the washing down of the crime scene.

The sources said the police officials who had recorded their statements on Tuesday had almost repeated what they had been quoted as saying in the UN fact-finding commission's report. “None of them said they had received orders from the Military Intelligence chief, but described it as a crowd management and public order measure taken after collection of necessary evidence material from the site,” they said.

According to sources, the United Nations Commission had not said in its report that any police officer had held Maj-Gen Ijaz responsible for ordering hosing down of the scene.

It had cited some unnamed sources, including from the police, as claiming that they had been told by the then CPO of Rawalpindi, Saud Aziz, that he had implemented instructions received from the MI chief.

The report said actions taken by Rawalpindi district police and omissions in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, including the washing down of the crime scene and failure to collect and preserve evidence, had compromised the investigation.

The investigation into the killings of Ms Bhutto and those who had died with her lacked direction, was ineffective and suffered from a lack of commitment to identify and bring all perpetrators to justice, it said.

The UN document said the investigation had been severely hampered by intelligence agencies and government officials, which impeded an unfettered search for the truth. More significantly, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) conducted parallel investigations, gathering evidence and detaining suspects. Evidence gathered from such parallel investigations was selectively shared with the police.

FIA PROBE The Special Investigation Group of the FIA, which has been asked to fix criminal responsibility in the murder case, questioned on Wednesday the then city police chief Saud Aziz, SSP (Operations) Yaseen Farooq, SP Khuram Shahzad and three deputy superintendents of police.

According to sources, an SIG team interviewed SP Ishtiaq Hussain Shah, who was DSP of Rawalpindi city when the incident took place, for answers to questions about security measures. The SIG team was headed by Deputy Director Khalid Qureshi.

The police official said he was on duty on the Liaquat Road when the explosion took place and he found himself on a hospital bed when he regained consciousness.

He said it had been decided that no exit gate of Liaquat Bagh would be opened before Ms Bhutto left the venue, but he did not know on whose orders and why the gates had been opened.

Rana Shahid, who was the DSP of the Cantonment Circle, said he had been assigned the task to collect important evidence from the scene. He said he had found a pistol, a mask and pellets.

Another DSP, Sultan Chaddar, was also interviewed.

The SIG team had also summoned the deputy divisional warden of the civil defence department, Walaiat Satti, considering him as the official in charge of the Bomb Disposal Squad. But he informed the team that he was only a volunteer and had nothing to do with bomb disposal.