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Conflicting reports about the death of political leader Benazir Bhutto have people wondering about the Pakistani equivalent of a second gunman on the grassy knoll.
The government version yesterday is stirring up accusations that the Pakistani government didn’t have enough security. The following have been offered as explanations of how she died.
Shot by gunman
It was initially reported a rooftop sniper fired bullets at her car before a second assailant blew himself up about 50 metres down the road, a theory given by senior Pakistan Peoples Party officials.
Photo published in Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad
Authorities said later Thursday that Bhutto died from bullet wounds fired by a young man in the crowd surrounding her vehicle, who then blew himself up.
[ VIDEO ]
KARACHI – October 19, 2007 – According to news reports, as dusk gave way to night, the street lights that should have illuminated the route Benazir Bhutto’s homecoming cavalcade was inching along failed to do their job. Yet house lights went on as usual in the same sector.
Those with Motive Abound
Without having access to any special information, I’d vote for the latter: sabotage by those who fear Benazir Bhutto’s return to politics. The Islamic parties have had it easy over the past few years. Because no organized secular political opposition to military rule was allowed, Islamists took advantage of the vacuum; they achieved a degree of power never possible when they had to contest elections against parties like the Pakistan People’s Party and the real Muslim League. Benazir’s return changes the equation. The Islamists lose their free ride.
KARACHI (The Guardian) Oct. 23, 2007 – Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has accused the Pakistani government of staging a cover-up after it refused her request for British and American experts to join the inquiry into last week’s suicide bombing, writes the Guardian. “It’s simply not right that attempts should be made to cover up an assassination attempt … Obviously some people are being protected,” she said.
- Retired Brigadier Ejaz Shah, according to Raman, also played an active role in the campaign to discredit Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Caudhury after he started calling for the files of a large number of missing persons who were taken into custody by the police and the intelligence agencies.
From the website of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party:
[Emergency] The NAB Diaries – Part One and Part Two
By Amer Nazir – December 14, 2007 – For the non-Pakistanis, NAB is the acronym for The National Accountability Bureau. The flag ship of Musharraf. The main reason he gave for assuming power. He said that the nation had become too corrupt. NAB is composed of serving and retired army officers with unlimited powers. They are answerable to none. Present in every major city, each NAB office has a jail within its compound where prisoners are kept without any possibilities of bail. Some of them picked up from the streets, most from their beds at dawn. Several have died during interrogations …
Benazir points at Pervaiz Elahi, Ejaz Shah, Afzal, Hameed Gul as threat
Wednesday, 24 October 2007 KARACHI: Chairperson Pakistan Peoples Party Benazir Bhutto, in a letter addressed to the president, has written about attack on her life, sources said. In the letter she has pointed at the Chief Miniser of Punjab Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, DG IB Ejaz Shah, former director National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Waseem Afzal and former ISI chief Gen. (Rtd) Hameed Gul as conspirators. The PPP chairperson while expressing her reservations in the letter wrote that her life was in danger from Pervaiz Elahi, Brig. (Rtd) Ejaz Shah and Gen. Hameed Gul.
In the late 1980s, Pakistani President Benazir Bhutto, feeling the mujaheddin network has grown too strong, tells President George H. W. Bush, “You are creating a Frankenstein.” However, the warning goes unheeded.
[Newsweek, 10/1/2001]
The other candidate …
In October 1990, Nawaz Sharif is running for election to replace Benazir Bhutto as the prime minister of Pakistan. According to a senior Pakistani intelligence source, bin Laden passes a considerable amount of money to Sharif and his party, since Sharif promises to introduce a hard-line Islamic government. Bin Laden has been supporting Sharif for several years.
Nawaz Sharif
Under the dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s the ISI really flowered as a kind of `state within a state’. It played a key role in manipulating the domestic political process to the disadvantage of Zia’s main political opponents: the Bhutto family and the Pakistani People’s Party. The ISI forged a close alliance with the US Central Intelligence Agency, whether in dealing with domestic leftists or – particularly – the Russians in Afghanistan. The main goal was to arm the Afghan resistance and bid up the cost of Russian intervention. It was an odd combination of Pakistani barracks nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism and US imperial might. Authoritarianism was the glue that held this disparate group together and the ISI was its main instrument. Although not without its tensions, this alliance held until the attacks of 11 September 2001, when it fell spectacularly apart.
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Afghan resistance
The 1983 suggestion of American Ambassador to Pakistan Ronald Spiers, that the U.S. provide Stingers to the mujahidin accordingly went nowhere for several years. Much of the resistance to the supply of Stinger missiles was generated internally from the CIA station chief’s desire (prior to the accession of Milt Bearden to the post) to keep the covert assistance program small and inconspicuous. Instead, the millions appropriated went to purchase Chinese, Warsaw Pact, and Israeli weaponry. Only in March 1985, did Reagan’s national security team formally decide to switch their strategy from mere harassment of Soviet forces in Afghanistan to driving the Red Army completely out of the country. After vigorous internal debate, Reagan’s military and national security advisors agreed to provide the mujahidin with the Stinger anti-aircraft missile.
● Nuclear Spy AQ Khan – CIA/America Refused Arrest in 1975 & 1985 ◊ by Oui
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
