Bhutto Was Warned of Death Threats

Excerpts from the late Benazir Bhutto's forthcoming book RECONCILIATION (Simon & Schuster, Feb.15 publication) ran in London's Times on Sunday and the AP reports further, confirming based on its own copy of an uncorrected proof. Bhutto writes, "I was told by both the Musharraf regime and the foreign Muslim government that four suicide bomber squads would attempt to kill me.... These included, the reports said, the squads sent by the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud; Hamza bin Laden, a son of Osama bin Laden; Red Mosque militants; and a Karachi-based militant group.... I wrote a letter to Musharraf. I told him that if I was assassinated by the militants it would be due to their sympathisers in his regime, whom I suspected wanted to eliminate me and remove the threat I posed to their grip on power."

Also in the lengthy Times excerpt: "Few on the aeroplane that carried me from Dubai to Karachi knew that in my briefcase I carried with me the manuscript of this book exploring the dual crises confronting the Islamic world – both internal and external. Within hours of my reaching Pakistan, some of the pages would be symbolically charred by fire and splattered with blood and flesh of dismembered bodies thrown up by devastating terrorist bombs.

"The carnage that accompanied the joyous celebration of my return was a horrific metaphor for the crisis that lies before us and the need for an enlightened renaissance both within Islam and between Islam and the rest of the world.

When I returned, I did not know whether I would live or die. I knew that the same elements of Pakistani society that had colluded to destroy my father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and end democracy in Pakistan in 1977 were now arrayed against me for the same purpose exactly 30 years later."

AP

Times excerpt

Report from Publishers Lunch.