Benazir murder case: Suspect Qari Saifullah ‘no terrorist’

Rana Sanaullah quoted by BBC as saying that al Qaeda suspect Qari Saifullah Akhtar was not a terrorist.

Punjab Home Minister Rana Sanaullah has been quoted by the BBC as saying that al Qaeda suspect Qari Saifullah Akhtar was not a terrorist.

In her posthumously-published book Reconciliation, the slain Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Benazir Bhutto had accused Akhtar of being involved in an assassination attempt on her on October 18, 2007, in Karachi. Akhtar had been quizzed about the attack on the former prime minister but Punjab authorities released him for lack of evidence, Sanaullah said. “So if he was released after being interrogated in two most sensitive cases, he cannot be termed a terrorist or accused of involvement in any case without existence of any other proof,” Sanaullah told reporters in Lahore.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 12^th,  2011.