Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has said that assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto ignored warnings from the government.
“She was informed of the threat to her, the first time about three to four weeks back when she wanted to the same place, The intelligence agencies knew there was a threat and we told her not to go…
So therefore she went on her own volition, ignoring the threat.”
- President Musharraf
He also showed his dissatisfaction regarding the investigation into her death, and responding to question related to the conspiracy theories that blame Musharraf’s government for helping Bhutto’s assassination he said :
“Frankly, I consider the question below my dignity to answer, but however I would like to answer it. I’m not a feudal and I’m not a tribal — I have been brought up in a very educated and civilized family which believes in values, which believes in principles, which believes in character.
“My family, by any imagination, is not a family which believes in killing people, assassinating, intriguing. And that is all there I want to say.”-President Musharraf
Liaqat Bagh is a park in Rawalpindi for political gatherings and is named after the Pakistan’s first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, who was assassinated in 1951.
President Musharraf, while detailing the security provided to Benazir Bhutto in Liaquat Bagh, where she was killed on 27 December 2007, said that more than 1,000 police were patrolling the park where Bhutto’s convoy passed last Thursday, and government snipers patrolled each building’s rooftop. Bhutto was traveling in a bulletproof vehicle, and had handpicked the head of her security detail.
Musharraf also pointed out that no one else in the vehicle was injured when gunshots rang out, followed by suicide blast that killed nearly two dozen people in the crowd.
“Nobody gets hurt (inside the car), only she when she … decides to rise above the sunroof,”-President Musharraf
“Anyone who wants to assassinate or do anything of this kind must weigh pros and cons, Would I … be the maximum gainer or is there somebody else here who could gain more? So this is another element that I leave to your judgment.”
-President Musharraf
He expressed his dissatisfaction with the way investigators immediately cleaned the area and thus possibly destroying some forensic evidence :
“It’s unnecessary. It shouldn’t have been done, But if you are meaning that they did it by design to hide evidence — no
It is just inefficiency … on the part of these people who think that things have to be cleared and the road has to be cleared and traffic has to go through.”
“But certainly I’m sure that they didn’t do it with an intention of hiding some secrets or that the intelligence agencies … had instructed them to hide this. No, I don’t believe that.”
-President Musharraf