Benazir Bhutto murdered again. By Hamid Mir
She placed her glasses
on her eyes and said, “Let me tell you today, clearly, that they have decided
to kill me. They will kill me soon and they will put the responsibility on the
Taliban or the Al Qaeda. But you can name Musharraf as my assassin if I am
killed”.
It took almost ten
years for a Pakistani anti-terror court to announce its verdict in the Benazir Bhutto murder
case. The Rawalpindi judge Muhammad Asghar Khan acquitted five accused Taliban
terrorists, awarded 17-years imprisonment each to two senior police officials
for abetting the crime and declared former military dictator Pervez Musharraf
absconder.
There is deep
disappointment among the people after this controversial verdict. They believe
Benazir Bhutto has been murdered again. It was expected that the court would
not be able to convict Musharraf in absentia and the five main accused
released. But I didn’t think that the court would imprison Ex-DIG Saud Aziz and
SP Khurram Shehzad; I thought they would be saved by some “powerful people.”
But the court has rejected Musharraf’s conspiracy theory and actually reversed
it by implicating two police officials. Does this mean that
Musharraf is part of the crime? Even as the former dictator enjoys life in
London, Benazir Bhutto has returned as a bad nightmare for the former dictator.
I still remember my
last meeting with Benazir Bhutto just a few days before her assassination in
2007. She invited me for breakfast at her residence in Islamabad. The breakfast
table was laid outside her living area in the garage. Having known her since
1987 I was sure she wanted to say something very important to me and was trying
to avoid our conversation from being bugged; hence the outdoors breakfast. She received me with a
smile on her face but looked sad and disturbed. She had survived a suicide
attack only two months before in Karachi, on October 18th 2007 when she
had returned from exile, in a bomb attack which claimed 180 people. I told her I
wasn’t carrying my mobile phone with me. She sent hers inside the house as
well.
She started her
conversation by asking me about my family and then said, “I must confess you
were right about my dialogue with Musharraf. It was just a trap. Musharraf only
wanted to use me for prolonging his power. He was not serious about restoring
democracy. Now this dialogue is over.”
She ordered orange
juice for me and lemon and honey tea for herself. She began to eat walnuts with
lemon and honey tea. She offered some walnuts to me and said “I am trying to
reduce my weight with these, knowing that I may not live a long life”. I
immediately responded, May God give you a long life. She expressed concerns
about my security. She recalled my first kidnapping in 1990 when she was prime
minister and I had filed a story saying that president Ghulam Ishaq Khan was
planning to dismiss her....read more:
