Benazir Bhutto - SZABIST

Top political sources told Outlook that hours before Benazir was assassinated, she was on the verge of
exposing an ISI operation to rig the January 8 general election. They say she had been collecting
incontrovertible proof about a rigging cell allegedly established at an ISI safe house in Islamabad. The
cell was tasked with changing the election results in favour of the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-e-
Azam (PML-Q) on the day of the polling. Sources say a close confidant of Benazir had sent an e-mail
message on December 25 to her informing her that Brigadier Riazullah Khan Chib was working in
tandem with Intelligence Bureau director Brigadier General (retd) Ejaz Hussain Shah to manipulate
election results.
The PML-Q (a party of Musharraf loyalists) was in power before the National Assembly was
dissolved, and was the instrument through which Musharraf had ruled Pakistan over the last five
years.
The e-mail message to Benazir said the so-called Election Monitoring Cell was to ensure that ballot
papers in over 100 constituencies of Punjab and Sindh were stamped in favour of the PML-Q. These
ballot papers were to be stamped at the ghost polling stations established in the provincial
headquarters of the ISI and the IB, and were to be counted before the presiding officers were to
announce the results. "All this is being done because of the fact that Musharraf simply can't afford a
hostile parliament as a result of the 2008 polls," the e-mail message said.
Benazir replied to the e-mail message from her Blackberry the same day. She wrote, "I was told that
the ISI and the MI have been asked not to meddle. But I will doublecheck." On December 27 at 1.12
pm, a few hours before she was assassinated, Benazir sent a mail to the confidant asking, "I need the
address of the safe house (in Islamabad) as well as the phone numbers of the concerned. Pl try and
obtain ASAP. Mbb, Sent from my BlackBerry(r) wireless device."
The confidant wrote back at 3:06, "I have re-checked the information with the same source which
earlier said the ISI and the MI have been asked not to meddle. The source claims that Brigadier
Riazullah Khan Chib retired from the ISI a few months ago but was re-employed, since he belongs to
the arm of the artillery and considered close to Musharraf who too comes from the same wing of the
army. The source says Chib's cover job is somewhere else but he is actually supervising a special
election cell which is working in tandem with the chief of the Intelligence Bureau. I have further been
told that Brigadiers Ejaz Shah and Riaz Chib are close friends because of their having served (in)
Punjab as the provincial heads of the ISI and the Punjab regional director of the Anti-Narcotics Force
(ANF) respectively in the past. Both are considered to be loyalists of the Chaudhries..." It was the
powerful Chaudhry brothers of Punjab province (Shujaat Hussain and Pervez Elahi) who spawned the
PML-Q after engineering a split in the PML (Nawaz).
The confidant's message further stated: "The rigging cell/safe house in question is located on Shahrae-Dastoor,
close to the Pakistan House Bus Stop in Sector G-5 of Islamabad. It is a double-storey
building, without inscribing any address, as is the case with most of safe houses. The cell consists of
some retired and serving intelligence officials, which will show its magic on the election-day. Let me
further inform you that Musharraf had granted Sitara-e-Imtiaz Military to Brig (Retd) Riaz Chib on
December 17, 2007, for his meritorious services in operational field. Before his retirement, Chib was
in charge of the ISI-led Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB) which used to deal with the internal security
matters, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit and Baltistan."
Weeks before her return on October 18, Benazir had been accusing Ejaz Shah of plotting to kill her.
She told me in our meeting that she was in London when she was told about the conspiracy to