Bhutto Assassinated in Attack on Rally
T. Mughal/European Pressphoto Agency
Above: Benazir Bhutto at a press conference in Islamabad in November.
Douglas E. Curran/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images
Above: Benazir Bhutto in front of a poster of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, after she won first parliamentary elections in 1988.
December 28, 2007
Bhutto Assassinated in Attack on Rally
By SALMAN MASOOD and GRAHAM BOWLEY
RAWALPINDI, Islamabad — An attack on a political rally killed the Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto near the capital, Islamabad, Thursday. Witnesses said Ms. Bhutto was fired upon by a gunman at close range before the blast, and an official from her party said Ms. Bhutto was further injured by the explosion, which was apparently caused by a suicide attacker.
Ms. Bhutto, a former prime minister of Pakistan, was declared dead by doctors at a hospital in Rawalpindi Rawalpindi
"At 6:16 p.m. she expired," said Dr. Abbas Hayat, professor of pathology at
In October, Ms. Bhutto survived a deadly suicide attack in the southern city of Karachi on the day she returned from years of self-imposed exile abroad to contest the parliamentary elections. Ms. Bhutto blamed extremist Islamic groups who she said wanted to take over the country for that attack, which narrowly missed her but killed 134 people.
Ms. Bhutto's death is the latest blow to
Ms. Bhutto had returned to
Ms. Bhutto's death Thursday immediately raised questions about whether the parliamentary elections scheduled for January will now go ahead or be postponed.
Hundreds of supporters had gathered at the political rally, which was being held at Liaqut Bagh, a park that is a common venue for political rallies and speeches, in
Amid the confusion after the explosion, the site was littered with pools of blood. Shoes and caps of party workers were lying on the asphalt, and shards of glass were strewn about the ground. Pakistani television cameras captured images of ambulances pushing through crowds of dazed and injured people at the scene of the assassination.
CNN reported that witnesses at the scene described the assassin as opening fire on Ms. Bhutto and her entourage, hitting her at least once in the neck and once in the chest, before blowing himself up.
Farah Ispahani, a party official from Ms. Bhutto's party, said: "It is too soon to confirm the number of dead from the party's side. Private television channels are reporting twenty dead." Television channels were also quoting police sources as saying that at least 14 people were dead.
At the hospital where Ms. Bhutto was taken, a large number of police began to cordon off the area as angry party workers smashed windows. Many protesters shouted "Musharraf Dog". One man was crying hysterically, saying, "O my sister has been killed." Amid the crowd, dozens of people beat their chests, and chanted slogans against Mr. Musharraf.
Nahid Khan, a close aide to Ms. Bhutto, was crying with swollen eyes in a room next to the operating theater, and the corridors of the hospital swarmed with mourners.
Ms. Bhutto had been warned by the government before her return to
Ms. Bhutto, 54, returned to Pakistan this year to present herself as the answer to the nation's troubles: a tribune of democracy in a state that has been under military rule for eight years, and the leader of the country's largest opposition political party, founded by her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, one of Pakistan's most flamboyant and democratically inclined prime ministers.
But her record in power, and the dance of veils she has deftly performed since her return -- one moment standing up to Mr. Musharraf, then next seeming to accommodate him, and never quite revealing her actual intentions -- has stirred as much distrust as hope among Pakistanis.
A graduate of Harvard and Oxford , she brought the backing of Washington and London
But with these accomplishments, Ms. Bhutto also brought controversy, and a legacy among Pakistanis as a polarizing figure who during her two turbulent tenures as prime minister, first from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996, often acted imperiously and impulsively.
She faced deep questions about her personal probity in public office, which led to corruption cases against her in
Ms. Bhutto saw herself as the inheritor of her father's mantle, often spoke of how he encouraged her to study the lives of legendary female leaders ranging from Indira Gandhi to Joan of Arc.
Following the idea of big ambition, Ms. Bhutto called herself chairperson for life of the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party, a seemingly odd title in an organization based on democratic ideals and one she has acknowledged quarreling over with her mother, Nusrat Bhutto, in the early 1990s.
Saturday night at the diplomatic reception, Ms. Bhutto showed how she could aggrandize. Three million people came out to greet her in Karachi on her return last month, she said, calling it Pakistan's "most historic" rally. In fact, crowd estimates were closer to 200,000, many of them provincial party members who had received small amounts of money to make the trip.
Such flourishes led questioning in Pakistan
"She believes she is the chosen one, that she is the daughter of Bhutto and everything else is secondary," said Feisal Naqvi, a corporate lawyer in
When Ms. Bhutto was re-elected to a second term as Prime Minister, her style of government combined both the traditional and the modern, said Zafar Rathore, a senior civil servant at the time.
But her view of the role of government differed little from the classic notion in
As secretary of interior, responsible for the Pakistani police force, Mr. Rathore, who is now retired, said he tried to get an appointment with Ms. Bhutto to explain the need for accountability in the force. He was always rebuffed, he said.
Finally, when he was seated next to her in a small meeting, he said to her, "I've been waiting to see you," he recounted. "Instantaneously, she said: 'I am very busy, what do you want. I'll order it right now.' "
She could not understand that a civil servant might want to talk about policies, he said. Instead, he said, "she understood that when all civil servants have access to the sovereign, they want to ask for something."
But until her death, Ms. Bhutto ruled the party with an iron hand, jealously guarding her position, even while leading the party in absentia for nearly a decade.
Members of her party saluted her return to
Ms. Bhutto's marriage to Asif Ali Zardari was arranged by her mother, a fact that Ms. Bhutto has often said was easily explained, even for a modern, highly educated Pakistani woman.
To be acceptable to the Pakistani public as a politician she could not be a single woman, and what was the difference, she would ask, between such a marriage and computer dating?
Mr. Zardari is known for his love of polo and other perquisites of the good life like fine clothes, expensive restaurants, homes in Dubai and London, and an apartment in New York.
He was minister of investment in Ms. Bhutto's second government. And it was from that perch that he made many of the deals that haunted Ms. Bhutto, and himself, in the courts.
There were accusations that the couple had illegally taken $1.5 billion from the state. It is a figure that Ms. Bhutto has vigorously contested.
Indeed, one of Ms. Bhutto's main objectives in seeking to return to power was to restore the reputation of her husband, who was jailed for eight years in Pakistan, said Abdullah Riar, a former senator in the Pakistani Parliament and a former colleague of Ms. Bhutto's.
"She told me, 'Time will prove he is the Nelson Mandela of
Salman Masood reported from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Graham Bowley from New York
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/12/27/bhutto.security/
Bhutto said she'd blame Musharraf if killed
Story Highlights:
Bhutto wrote e-mail on October 26, eight days after deadly suicide bombing
Before returning to Pakistan, Bhutto told CNN she was aware of threats
Lack of security worried Bhutto upon her arrival in Karachi, adviser Siegel says
Bhutto was concerned problem was worsening as elections neared, Siegel says
(CNN) -- Two months before her death, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto sent an e-mail to her U.S. adviser and longtime friend, saying that if she were killed, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf would bear some of the blame.
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto addresses supporters Thursday in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
1 of 3 She cited his government's denial of her request for additional security measures after the October suicide bombing that targeted her upon returning to Pakistan from exile.
"Nothing will, God willing happen," she wrote to Mark Siegel, her U.S. spokesman, lobbyist and friend.
"Just wanted u to know if it does in addition to the names in my letter to Musharaf of Oct 16nth, I wld hold Musharaf responsible. I have been made to feel insecure by his minions and there is no way what is happening in terms of stopping me from taking private cars or using tinted windows or giving jammers or four police mobiles to cover all sides cld happen without him."
Bhutto was seeking to become prime minister for a third time when she was assassinated; her death comes exactly two weeks before Pakistan's January 8 parliamentary elections. Watch Siegel describe her concern and the reaction of Pakistan's U.S. ambassador »
Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., Mahmud Ali Durrani, on Thursday insisted Musharraf's government provided the former prime minister with unprecedented security. He said that terrorists and extremists, who also have targeted Musharraf, were the only ones responsible for her death. Watch a report on security provided to Bhutto »
Bhutto wrote the e-mail on October 26, eight days after at least 130 people were killed and hundreds more wounded in Karachi by the suicide bombing that occurred as Bhutto's motorcade passed.
Siegel forwarded that e-mail to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, with instructions he not report on it unless Bhutto was killed.
Just before returning to Pakistan after eight years of self-imposed exile, Bhutto told CNN she was aware of threats against her and said that some had come from people who hold "high positions" in Pakistan's government. She said she had written a letter to Musharraf about her fears, apparently the same letter she refers to in her e-mail to Siegel.
In a speech, she listed four groups she believed posed the biggest threat to her and her cause -- the Taliban in Pakistan, the Taliban in Afghanistan, al Qaeda and a suicide team from Karachi that she did not describe.
After the October bombing, she accused elements in the government and security services of trying to kill her and asked Musharraf for "basic security," including vehicles with tinted windows and private guards in addition to police guards. Three United States senators repeated the request in a letter to Musharraf.
Bhutto was concerned by the lack of security she had upon her arrival in Karachi and called the October 18 bombing "very suspicious," Siegel said. He accused Pakistani authorities of not investigating the assassination attempt and of refusing Bhutto's request for Scotland Yard and the FBI to aid in the investigation.
Bhutto and her husband had asked for jammers to impede the detonation of bombs; special vehicles with tinted windows; and four police vehicles to surround her at all times, Siegel said.
"She basically asked for all that was required for someone of the standing of a former prime minister," Siegel told CNN's "The Situation Room." "All of that was denied to her. ... She got some police protection, but it was sporadic and erratic."
Bhutto was concerned the problem was worsening as the January elections neared, Siegel said.
At the time of the October suicide bombing, Bhutto was riding in a truck from Karachi's airport to the tomb of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan. She had moved from the roof to inside the bulletproof, armed vehicle just moments before the blast and was unharmed.
CNN's Dan Rivers, in Karachi to cover her return to Pakistan, remarked at the time that her security appeared to be loose, saying his crew was able to walk up to the side of her vehicle without being stopped by authorities.
Durrani, Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., insisted security surrounding Bhutto then was more than adequate.
"There were, I think, a sea of security people," he said. "She was surrounded by police vehicles. And had it not been one of the police vehicles which took the blast in Karachi, unfortunately she would have died there.
"There was a bubble around her of security. The PPP [People's Party of Pakistan, Bhutto's party] insisted that they have their own private loyalists around. They were there too. And there were about 7,800 to 8,000 security people deployed just for that," Durrani said.
"That is more security than anybody deploys anywhere in the world."
Bhutto "is not a security person," said Durrani. "She's a politician. I think the government of Pakistan provided her all the security that was necessary. You tell me -- the way she was hit, she would have been hit with tinted windows or without, or without the IED ... so it's just a blame game."
After the October attack, Bhutto said police offered to let her use a helicopter for the trip from the airport, but she told them she wanted to be near her people. She said she did not regret that decision.
"She believed in democracy, and she believed in speaking to the people," Siegel said. "It's not reckless to go out and touch the people. Don't blame the victim for the crime. The person that was supposed to be protecting Benazir Bhutto and the other candidates was the government of Pakistan with the government of Pervez Musharraf."
At the same time, Siegel acknowledged, "She was moving almost in a sea of humanity," he said. "No system in the world can protect you against that."
Blitzer noted that Bhutto was shot Thursday while standing out of her vehicle's sunroof -- seen by some as a a reckless action after the October incident.
John Moore, who was at the scene of her assassination, told CNN he was surprised at Bhutto's actions, considering the earlier suicide attempt. The rally was smaller than expected, he said, and the people he spoke with said they "were just afraid to come out, for the simple reason that they all remembered what happened in Karachi."
Siegel grew emotional as he told Blitzer that Bhutto was "the bravest person I ever knew. ... She knew that there were risks coming back, but those risks were important, she thought, for the fight for democracy."
All About Pervez Musharraf • Benazir Bhutto
http://bznotes.wordpress.com/2006/06/29/celebration-of-pakistani-women/
Celebration of Pakistani women
Blessings to the Bhutto Family!
Prayers for Peace in Pakistan and Upon Mother Earth!
Come Together and Create!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka:Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_News/
http://www.networkaztlan.com/
C/S
1 comment:
I am in contact with my Pakistani colleagues in conservation. They are heartbroken. Bhutto was a great hope for the restoration of democracy in Pakistan, and now they face a dangerous and chaotic period. I'm keeping track. I hope Pakistan is enough like India for the democratic power of the people to survive.
Linda
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