Remembering Benazir: Memoirs of an old friend

WASHINGTON:

Four years after Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi, Mark Siegel, a friend from her days at Harvard University, still vividly remembers the last time he met her.

“The last time I saw her was on September 26, 2007 in the lobby of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington DC,” he tells The Express Tribune.

“The day before, she’d given a speech for the Middle East Institute at the Russell Senate Office building. She was boarding a plane to Aspen, and she wanted me to bring her copies of the biography – she used to autograph them and give them out. I ran over to the hotel and gave her five copies of the book, and we looked at each other, and maybe we knew.

“It was sad, it was very sad,” he adds.

Siegel, who after Bhutto’s death produced the film Bhutto on her life and political career, reminisces about the time they worked together.

“I’d been her advisor since 1984, and we’d worked on two books together. We were close friends, and our families were close.

“I was her political advisor… She wouldn’t always listen,” he laughs.

“It’s a big hole in my life, not having her. Even now I pick up the phone when something happens, if I want to talk to her, or want to bounce something off her – and I don’t think that’s ever going to change.

“We were lifelong friends and I consider her children to be part of my family.”

Choking up, Siegel recalls emailing the former prime mister on his birthday, a mere four days before she passed away.

“I had sent her an email saying that I just blew out my birthday cake and my wish was that you be safe.”

Siegel has also submitted his testimony in the Anti-Terrorism Court in Pakistan in the Benazir Bhutto murder case vis-à-vis regarding a phone call Bhutto received in September 2007 from then president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf.

“I was with her that day, and in my presence, she got a call from Gen Musharraf and we discussed that call at the time. The ATC court was very interested in the content of that conversation. I can’t talk about it because I’m a witness in the case,” he says.

“I was never really concerned with the boy who pulled the trigger, that was not of any intel to me. I think so many of her friends and others felt the same way.

“We wanted to know why, who paid for it, who trained it, what was the reason. And I don’t think we’ve gotten those answers yet, I think it was part of a broad conspiracy and we haven’t gotten to the heart of it.

“She once said in the US: Democracy is the greatest revenge.

“I want some justice. Not just democracy, I want justice for her,” says her old friend.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 27^th, 2011.