Musharraf Accused of Bhutto Assassination

[Danny Jarman]

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/...350602.htm

It's in everyones interest to destabilise Pakistan and to stop it advancing as a country. As long as the foreign money keeps pouring in blood will continue to be spilled.

For sure Danny. Many powers do benefit form a destabilised Pakistan, India, the UK and US just for starters. It is a pawn in the great game. Then are internal players who also benefit from retention of their feudal privileges. But most Pakistanis have a terrible time of all this. Do you see Musharaff as likely behind this or are there others too?

Aren't Musharaff, the ISI and the US all in cohorts? I see them as one and the same

I fear a similar fate for Imran Khan who is gaining more political ground and popularity by the day.

[Magda Hassan]

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/...350602.htm

It's in everyones interest to destabilise Pakistan and to stop it advancing as a country. As long as the foreign money keeps pouring in blood will continue to be spilled.

For sure Danny. Many powers do benefit form a destabilised Pakistan, India, the UK and US just for starters. It is a pawn in the great game. Then are internal players who also benefit from retention of their feudal privileges. But most Pakistanis have a terrible time of all this. Do you see Musharaff as likely behind this or are there others too?

Aren't Musharaff, the ISI and the US all in cohorts? I see them as one and the same

I fear a similar fate for Imran Khan who is gaining more political ground and popularity by the day.

Yes, to a large extent that is the case. And Imran Khan is the biggest threat to that racket.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Imran Khan is the biggest threat to that racket.

It seems some of the players agree with you, as one of Imran's Khan's deputies has just been murdered.

Imran Khan blamed the city's dominant MQM party, a claim the party has denied, and the British government, for Hussain's murder in a series of tweets. "I am shocked and deeply saddened by the brutal killing of Zara Shahid Hussain, Zara apa to us, in Karachi tonite. A targeted act of terror!

"I hold Altaf Hussain directly responsible for the murder as he had openly threatened PTI workers and leaders through public broadcasts.

"I also hold the British Govt responsible as I had warned them abt Br citizen Altaf Hussain after his open threats to kill PTI workers."

Leading Pakistan politician Zahra Shahid Hussain killed outside home

Police say member of Imran Khan's Movement for Justice party ambushed by two bikers

Paul Gallagher
The Observer, Saturday 18 May 2013 22.09 BST

Imran Khan's supporters
Supporters of the Movement for Justice party protest in Karachi on 12 May. Zahra Shahid Hussain, a senior party member, has been killed. Photograph: Rehan Khan/EPA

A senior female member of Imran Khan's Movement for Justice party (PTI) was shot dead outside her home in Karachi on Saturday.

Reports suggested that Zahra Shahid Hussain, who was senior vice-president of the PTI, was killed while resisting an attempted robbery in the upmarket Defence neighbourhood of the city. Police said that she was ambushed by two people on a motorcycle. "The assailants opened fire on Zahra, 60, as soon as she reached the gate of her residence. Apparently they were there to target her only," an official said.

An eyewitness said that she handed the attackers her belongings, but was then shot, according to reports. Police superintendent Nasir Aftab said that initial findings suggested the killing was a purse snatching that went wrong. He said that, according to Hussain's daughter, her mother got into their car to leave. The driver drove the car out and was locking up the gate when two men on a motorcycle pulled up and tried to snatch her purse. "When she resisted, they shot her."

Hussain died on her way to hospital, it was reported.

Imran Khan blamed the city's dominant MQM party, a claim the party has denied, and the British government, for Hussain's murder in a series of tweets. "I am shocked and deeply saddened by the brutal killing of Zara Shahid Hussain, Zara apa to us, in Karachi tonite. A targeted act of terror!

"I hold Altaf Hussain directly responsible for the murder as he had openly threatened PTI workers and leaders through public broadcasts.

"I also hold the British Govt responsible as I had warned them abt Br citizen Altaf Hussain after his open threats to kill PTI workers."

MQM television said on its facebook page: "As per Zahra Shahid Hussain's daughter and driver, the eyewitnesses, it was a street crime related murder. She got killed resisting a robbery." MQM leader Altaf Hussain has also condemned the killing.

Dr Arif Alvi, the former secretary-general of PTI, tweeted: "I condemn the murder of Zahra Shahid Hussein my dear colleague & demand the arrest of the killers immediately. May her soul rest in peace."

Hussain's murder comes on the eve of a highly contested partial rerun of the vote in the area following last Saturday's general election.

[Jan Klimkowski]

This is less about truth, and more about timing.

Who can read the runes of the deep political timing of these, ahem, revelations?.....

Pervez Musharraf indicted over Benazir Bhutto murder

Pakistan's former military ruler makes brief court appearance and denies involvement in assassination of ex-PM

Reuters in Rawalpindi
theguardian.com, Tuesday 20 August 2013 05.58 BST

Pervez Musharraf at his Rawalpindi home in April: he is being charged over the murder of Benazir Bhutto. Photograph: T Mughal/EPA

Pakistan's former military leader Pervez Musharraf was formally charged by a court on Tuesday with murdering Benazir Bhutto, the ex-prime minister who was assassinated at a political campaign rally in 2007.

Musharraf was indicted during a short hearing at a court in the city of Rawalpindi, a move that adds to the problems facing the former president who returned from self-exile in March only to be entangled in three legal cases, barred from contesting elections and put under house arrest.

Public prosecutor Mohammad Azhar told reporters that the 70-year-old retired general was charged with murder, conspiracy to murder and facilitation of murder during a short hearing.

Musharraf's lawyer said he denied all the all the charges and the cases against him were fabricated.

Militant groups have vowed to kill the former army chief, who was whisked to court under heavy security, with hundreds of police positioned along the road to the court.

Bhutto warned before her death that Musharraf should be held responsible if she was assassinated. His government was widely criticised for not doing enough to protect Bhutto when she returned to the country in 2007.

Nonetheless, many respected lawyers say the case against him is flimsy.
They believe the prosecution will struggle to prove a link between Musharraf and the assassination of Bhutto, who died after a gun and bomb attack on her car as she left a campaign rally in Rawalpindi.

At the time, Musharraf's government blamed the assassination on Baitullah Mehsued, the Pakistani Taliban chief who was killed by a US drone strike in 2009.

Heraldo Muñoz, an assistant secretary general of the UN and chairman of a panel that investigated the death of Bhutto, has said there is no "proof of culpability" against Musharraf.

But Musharraf does bear "political and moral responsibility for the assassination", Muñoz wrote in an extract of soon-to-be published book into the affair. He said Musharraf did not provide adequate security for the former prime minister.

He quotes a former Pakistani diplomat who said Musharraf taunted Bhutto, allegedly telling her: "I'll only protect you if you are nice to me."

Musharraf is a hate figure within the judiciary and may struggle to receive a fair trial. The enmity dates from 2007 when top judges were put under house arrest after he declared emergency rule the subject of another of the three cases against him, for which he was formally indicted in June.

The third case relates to the killing during a military operation of a tribal leader in the insurgency wracked province of Baluchistan called Akbar Khan Bugti in 2006.

Potentially far more troubling for Musharraf was the government announcement in June that the former president should be tried for treason, a capital offence.

Only the government can pursue a treason trial and many analysts had assumed newly elected prime minister Nawaz Sharif would avoid picking a fight with the powerful army that does not want to see one of its former leaders imprisoned or executed.

[Peter Lemkin]

NukeGate: Richard Armitage's Secret Deal with Musharraf & the Murder of Benazir Bhutto

By Alex Constantine / December 21st, 2012

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NukeGate archive(From "Terror on the Right," coming in the Fall, 2013)

Before returning to power in Pakistan, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto offered to allow investigations of the A.Q. Khan nuclear trafficking network in the West. She speculated that an inquiry "might produce terrible results" for several ex-generals of the Pakistan Army who were part of it, but "were conveniently let off the hook as part of a secret deal between General Pervez Musharraf and Richard Armitage in 2004."

"Dr AQ Khan," Pakistan's International News reports, "is on record having said that all the top army generals since 1985 knew about the proliferation activities of his network."
Musharraf agreed to jail Dr. A.Q. Khan

"only after striking a secret deal with US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in 2004 that his own army generals involved in the illegal nuclear trade would not be touched and most importantly, that he himself would be accepted by the Americans to rule Pakistan in his military uniform."

Benazir Bhutto herself stood in the way of Musharraf's ambitions when she returned in 2007, but it is not known if assassination a foreign policy function that Armitage had some experience in was a term of the "secret deal," but it was a necessary one if Pakistan was to continue to be ruled by a four-star general in military plumage.
Benazir Bhutto was murdered on December 27, 2007 in Rawalpindi. Mark Siegel, an American lobbyist, former director of the Democratic National Committee and a Bhutto confidante, has testified, in a statement recorded by Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency, that Pervez Musharraf threatened Benazir Bhutto with "dire consequences" if she returned before the 2008 elections. Bhutto was with Siegel when she received the call from Musharraf. In that conversation, Musharraf informed Ms Bhutto that "he would not be responsible for her security if she returned before the elections."[1]
Shortly after Benazir Bhutto was murdered, Musharraf issued a statement calling on the citizens of Pakistan to remain calm so the "nefarious designs of terrorists can be defeated."
After the deal was struck by Armitage and Musharraf, "the role of Pakistani generals in nuclear proliferation was ignored by the Americans and they focused on AQ Khan alone." Khan was "made a scapegoatin the name of national security interests.'"
A dossier on the Khan network released in England states that A,Q. Scapegoat was "put under detention after he threatened the former ISI chief General Ehasanul Haq that he would tell the names of all the military generals who were part of this network if he was touched by the Musharraf government." Before he could make good on his threat, however, "he was arrested and put under house arrest without any access to the media and the courts. The same dossier had revealed that Dr A.Q. Khan had told his investigators that all the chiefs of Pakistan Army since 1985 knew about the activities of his illegal network."[2]
A recent postscript:

Musharraf wanted to eliminate' Bhutto considering her threat': Pak authorities

ANI, December 15, 2012, 13:51

Islamabad: Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has told Interpol that of former President Pervez Musharraf wanted to eliminate Benazir Bhutto considering her a threat to his rule, it has emerged.
The statement was apparently made after the world police rejected Pakistan authorities' request to arrest Musharraf, who is currently in exile in London.
According to the Dawn, in September this year, the FIA sent the request to Interpol for the arrest of Musharraf, but the latter rejected it, stating it was moved under political pressure.
The FIA recently dispatched another letter to Interpol, requesting them to arrest Musharraf, a prime accused in the Bhutto murder case.
FIA attached arrest warrants for Musharraf as well as some pieces of evidence, with the letter.
The evidence dispatched with the letter on Thursday included a statement by US Journalist Mark Siegel and records of emails sent by Musharraf to former premier Benazir Bhutto.
http://zeenews.india.com/news/south-asia...16858.html

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[1] Khalid Iqbal, "Mark Siegel Among Six Summoned by ATC," The International News, December, 16, 2012.

[2] "Access to AQ Khan to Expose Many Sacred Cows," The International News, (available at the "Back Issues" section of the IN site, not in the archives, but it was reposted on October 10, 2007):http://www.constantinereport.com/allpost...cret-deal/

[Marlene Zenker]

It has always been a volatile area but it seems more so now than at any time. Bandit country.

Gee, I'm sure glad that an unstable crazy place like Pakistan doesn't have nuclear weapons - oh wait - they do!::::::::

[Magda Hassan]

Yeah, makes me sleep well at night too. ::willynilly::

[Peter Lemkin]

According to the Federation of American Scientists http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/nu...tatus.html Pakistan is estimated to have about 100 +/-10 nuclear weapons. They have already been known to have given the technology [if not actual weapons or parts] to other states - and have been suspect of even possibly giving them to non-state groups! The government and military/intelligence apparatus of Pakistan plays both a 'friendly' and 'hostile' stance toward the 'War on Terror' run primarily by the USA. They fight against and host persons listed as terrorists by other nations. Whatever they are, they are unstable, and a war with India is always another possibility [several terrorist actions in India came from groups in Pakistan with the seeming wink and nod of the Pakistani government]. No one has yet figured out the complexities of the bin Laden 'story'. Was he really there? And if he was, he was in the very city that hosts the HQ of the military, and must have been under the protection of the military and/or ISI [intelligence]. A very troubling country to have nukes. [Although I trust NO nation to have any!] The Bhutto murder has never been solved to anyone's satisfaction [as is usually the case in the assassination of candidates of heads of state everywhere]. ISI is known to have given money to Atta and his group of patsies for 9-11. Rogue nation at best - and with 100+ nuclear weapons of unknown strength and security. Fractured internal political/military/intelligence structures too.....no problem!