Benazir’s murder and Musharraf

Investigators say an email sent by Musharraf to Benazir could be interpreted as a threat.

After failing to get former president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf to respond to investigations pertaining to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) is getting ready to approach the Anti-Terrorism Court-III in Rawalpindi to get him declared a proclaimed offender from law. The exact words from the prosecutor were: “the court could be requested to declare him as a proclaimed offender if Musharraf does not submit himself before the law.” The FIA considers him an absconder in its latest report on the killing of the former prime minister and leader of the PPP.

What is more, investigators say they have found no direct evidence against the former president so far, but that he could not be completely cleared at this stage. The FIA has proceeded on the basis of a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) of the FIA, which had investigated former intelligence bureau chief Ijaz Shah and former director general of the crisis management cell of the Ministry of Interior Brig (retd) Javaid Iqbal Cheema. More directly, the trial of Saud Aziz, former Rawalpindi CPO, and Khurram Shahzad, the then SP of Rawal Town division, has led investigators to the conclusion that the suspicious behaviour of the two, before and after the killing, could be linked to Mr Musharraf.

TV discussions Monday night revealed that the FIA had sent a questionnaire to Mr Musharraf relating to the case but that he had not responded. Those defending him have declared non-receipt of the questionnaire and have dismissed the position that he could be declared a proclaimed offender. But, more ominously, the FIA’s attachment of an email message to their statement before the court points to possible complicity: The said email sent by Musharraf to Ms Bhutto says that “her security depended on the nature of her relations with him.” This, the investigators say, could be interpreted as a threat.

Further, Ms Bhutto is mentioned as saying that Musharraf was annoyed with her because she was inclined towards a political reconciliation (with Nawaz Sharif); that in her letter to Mark Siegel, a foreign journalist, she had stated that she felt threatened from Mr Musharraf, former Punjab chief minister Pervaiz Elahi and Brigadier (retd) Ijaz Shah. A news leak had earlier revealed that the plot to murder Ms Bhutto was hatched in the house of a brigadier, but this was quickly dismissed by the government as rumour not founded on truth.

One could point to a number of other details appearing in Ms Bhutto’s last book, so far not highlighted in the case. Qari Saifullah Akhtar, leader of Harkatul-Jihad-al-Islami, linked to al Qaeda, first noticed as a co-accused in the coup-attempt against Ms Bhutto’s government by some army officers, was mentioned by Ms Bhutto like this: “Enter Qari Saifullah Akhtar, a wanted terrorist who had tried to overthrow my second government. He had been extradited by the United Arab Emirates and was languishing in Karachi central jail. According to my second source, the officials in Lahore had turned to Akhtar for help” (Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy & the West; Simon & Schuster, p. 221).

Akhtar was in the custody of the government. Why was he let out before her arrival? After Ms Bhutto’s assassination, he was found not guilty by a court and is at large. The spoor leads to al Qaeda because a commander of al Qaeda had owned to killing an ‘American asset’. Then there is a series of bits of evidence of army officers acting at the behest of al Qaeda — as in the murder of Brigadier (retd) Faisal Alvi who had published a statement in the British press that he had informed COAS General Kayani that some military top brass were working with al Qaeda.

An intercepted phone call of the leader of the Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, indicated he had got Ms Bhutto killed in Rawalpindi. The accomplices who facilitated the act are currently in jail facing trial, but no one dares take seriously their connection with a powerful Taliban-linked madrassa in Nowshehra in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. There is new emerging evidence that a phone call from Islamabad to the terrorists of Fata can get people killed. An army general sitting on top of all this in 2007 has to explain a few things.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 9^th, 2011.