Benazir Bhutto on Friday accused a shadowy web of figures with links to Pakistan’s powerful military establishment of orchestrating Thursday’s huge suicide bombing that killed 138 people and wounded 300.
Less than 24 hours after the failed assassination attempt, which has plunged Pakistan into a fresh crisis, Bhutto said she had received extensive information about plots against her life — including names of ringleaders and telephone numbers — days before she flew to Karachi early on Thursday.
All of the details were included in a letter she sent to President Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday. ”I told him that if something should happen to me the government should know certain things,” she said at a high-security press conference at her Karachi home.
”This was a dastardly and cowardly attack,” she said. ”We believe democracy alone can save Pakistan from disintegration and a militant takeover.”
”We are prepared to risk our lives and we are prepared to risk our liberty, but we are not prepared to surrender our great nation to the militants.”
A ”brotherly country” had provided Bhutto with intelligence about four suicide squads roaming Karachi, she said. They came from the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan Taliban, al-Qaida and ”a fourth group from Karachi”. She forwarded the details, including the names of three ringleaders, to Musharraf on the eve of her return.
”I hoped with so much detail in their hands the government would have been able to apprehend them. But I understand their difficulties,” she said.
The sense of foreboding intensified after she landed. As her fortified vehicle ploughed through a throng of supporters on Thursday night, street lights along the route were inexplicably switched off. Last-minute efforts to alert the National Security Adviser, Tariq Aziz, failed.
Her security guards discovered two potential assailants — one armed with a pistol, the other wearing a suicide bombing vest. But it was too late to stop another two attackers, she said. Giant explosions sent an orange fireball high into the sky and scattered charred corpses and body parts over a wide radius.
The attack was the worst political violence in Pakistan for years — and Bhutto claimed more plots were in the works. ”There are other attacks planned on me,” she said, jabbing the air.
She described a scheme in which undercover army commandos would contrive a gunfight outside one of her homes in Karachi or Larkana, before killing her. ”I’m not accusing the government. I’m accusing certain people who abuse their powers. I trust nothing will happen,” she said.
Bhutto has previously accused the head of Pakistan’s Military Intelligence agency and retired army officers of sympathising with the extremists who tried to kill her. After the blasts, her husband, Asif Zardari, directly accused the intelligence agencies of involvement.
But Bhutto was careful not to direct accusations against President Musharraf, with whom she is negotiating a possible power-sharing deal. The status of that arrangement now is unclear.
Official accounts of the attack differed. The home secretary of Sindh province, Ghulam Mohatarem, told a news conference that a single suicide bomber had first thrown a grenade to break through the security cordon around Bhutto’s procession before leaping towards the truck and detonating his explosives.
He said ball bearings and pellets were packed into the blast, accounting for the high death toll in the densely packed crowd. He blamed Islamist extremists for the attack but said he was unsure which group was responsible.
One of the main suspects denied any involvement. ”I had nothing to do with it,” Taliban commander Baitullah Masood told Reuters. Two weeks ago Masood vowed to dispatch bombers against Bhutto in reaction to her pro-US policies, in particular a promise to intensify the hunt for al-Qaeda in Pakistan.
A police official said an attacker’s head had been found and was being analysed for clues. Bhutto condemned her assailants as cowards and bad Muslims. ”No Muslim can attack a woman. No Muslim can attack innocent people,” she said.
Pieces of flesh, discarded shoes
Karachi was in a state of shock on Friday. Businesses and schools were closed on government orders and a trickle of traffic moved through half-deserted streets.
At the site of Thursday’s attack police forensic officers collected pieces of flesh and discarded shoes. Bhutto’s truck was hoisted away on a crane, one side splattered with blood and pockmarked with shrapnel holes. ”People are so shocked. They love Karachi,” said Navaid Hashmani, an accountancy student.
The episode marked a tragic start to Bhutto’s hopes for reviving her political fortunes. The large turnout provided strong evidence that her support remains intact after an eight-year absence.
Long-standing corruption charges against her have been dropped but a controversial amnesty signed by Musharraf remains open to legal challenge.
Explaining how she escaped the bombing, she said she was resting her swollen feet inside the truck, going over a speech she was due to give at the tomb of Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
Q&A
Who are the suspects?
No one claimed responsibility for the blast, one of the deadliest bombings in Pakistani history. But even before Bhutto arrived back in Pakistan after eight years of self-imposed exile, there had been open threats against her.
A pro-Taliban militant leader, Baitullah Masood, said he would target her with suicide attacks. Masood, probably the most prominent militant leader in the north-western region bordering Afghanistan, is also accused of carrying out attacks on Pakistani soldiers. His men are holding more than 200 Pakistani soldiers abducted recently.
This week, another militant commander, Haji Omar, said: ”She has an agreement with America. We will carry out attacks on Benazir Bhutto as we did on General Pervez Musharraf [Pakistan’s president].”
Who else is in the frame?
Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who is in Dubai, where the couple have been living in exile, has accused members of the security services, the ISI. ”I blame government for these blasts. It is the work of the intelligence agencies,” he said.
Elements of the ISI sympathise with the Taliban and it is a possibility that ”rogue elements” in the intelligence services were behind the attacks. The ISI became one of Pakistan’s most powerful institutions under General Zia-ul-Haq, the man who launched an Islamisation campaign and who overthrew Bhutto’s father and had him hung. After Zia’s death in a mysterious plane crash in 1988, the ISI actively campaigned against Bhutto when she entered politics.
What has been Musharraf’s response?
Musharraf said he was ”deeply shocked” by the midnight explosions, which went off near a truck carrying Bhutto. The state-run Associated Press of Pakistan reported he ”condemned this attack in the strongest possible words. He said this was a conspiracy against democracy”. Musharraf, who has been in negotiations with Bhutto on a power-sharing deal, has survived at least three assassination attempts himself. The latest took place in July when an unknown group fired an anti-aircraft gun at his plane as it took off from a runway in Rawalpindi.
What precautions were taken?
Police sealed off side roads with shipping containers, and bomb squads combed the streets. More than 3 500 police officers and 5 000 supporters patrolled the route and city schools were closed. Authorities had warned Bhutto that extremists sympathetic to the Taliban and al-Qaeda could try to assassinate her and urged her to take a helicopter to reduce the risk. ”I am not scared. I am thinking of my mission,” she had told reporters on the plane from Dubai.
What happened?
Leaving the airport, Bhutto refused to use a bulletproof glass cubicle that had been built on top of a truck taking her toward the tomb of Pakistan’s founding father, Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Her procession had been inching toward the centre of Karachi for 10 hours. As supporters thronged her truck, a small explosion occurred near the front of the vehicle, quickly followed by a larger blast, destroying two escorting police vans. The former prime minister had just gone to a downstairs compartment for a rest when the blast occurred, said Christina Lamb, Bhutto’s biographer. ”So she wasn’t on top in the open like rest of us, so that just saved her,” Lamb told Sky News.
What happens next?
The Pakistani authorities have begun their investigation. The authorities say the head of the suspected bomber has been found. It was estimated he had 15kg to 20kg of explosives strapped to his body. Typically, the upward force from a blast blows off the head a bomber. ”The attacker appears to be 20 to 21 years old, and had 48-hour stubble,” an investigator said. A sketch was being made and DNA samples taken.
Bhutto is meeting officials from her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in Karachi to discuss her next moves. – Guardian Unlimited Â