Benazir Bhutto - SZABIST

assassinate her. She then added, "Having come to know of the plot, I instantly wrote a letter to
General Musharraf, naming those in the establishment possibly conspiring to kill me, seeking
appropriate action. However, it did not occur to me then that I was actually committing a blunder and
signing my own death warrant by not naming Musharraf himself as my possible assassin.
It later dawned upon me that Musharraf could have possibly exploited the letter to his advantage and
ordered my assassination." Following the October 18 attack, it was disclosed that Shah was one of the
three persons whom Benazir had named in her letter to Musharraf.
However, a week before my conversation with Benazir, a high-level meeting reportedly presided over
by Musharraf in Islamabad had already dismissed her accusations as "childish". Those who
participated in the meeting were informed that the suicide attack on Benazir bore the hallmarks of Al
Qaeda, arguing that she has incurred the wrath of militants because of her support for the military
operation against the Red Mosque fanatics in Islamabad in July and for declaring that she would allow
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to question the father of the Pakistani nuclear
programme Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan about his proliferation activities.
Days before her return to Pakistan, Benazir told The Guardian that she felt the real danger to her came
from fundamentalist elements in the Pakistan military and intelligence establishment opposed to her
return. She scoffed at the assassination threats of Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud,
saying, "I am not worried about Baitullah Mehsud. I am worried about the threat within the present
government. People like Baitullah are mere pawns."
Asked in an interview on NBC a day later whether it was not risky to name a close friend of
Musharraf (Shah) as being someone who's plotting against her, Benazir said: "Well, at that time I did
not know whether there would be an assassination attempt that I would survive. And I wanted to leave
on record the (name of) suspects. I also didn't know that he (Shah) was a friend of General Musharraf.
But I asked myself that even if I knew that he was a friend and I thought of him as a suspect, would I
have not written? No, I would have written."
But this isn't to say that investigations into the assassination of Benazir will reveal the names of those
who masterminded it. Like all infamous assassination cases, the mastermind will remain a shadowy
figure on whose role people will only speculate about in whispers.
Martyr of democracy
Outlook India
January 14, 2008
S. Prasannarajan
Benazir Bhutto’s homecoming came to an abrupt end at 6.16 p.m. in Rawalpindi on Thursday. For
someone who has mythified herself as the Daughter of the East, home has always been a privileged
place in history. When she came home in October, though, it was arguably the most merciless place
on earth, caught between radical Islamism and military dictatorship.
She was, predictably enough, welcomed by bombs, for she was the usurper who challenged the
conceit of the General as well as the rage of the mullah. For the Islamist, she was the one who made