'She is to blame alone, nobody else'

That's what former Pakistan President Parvez Musharraf, recently held responsible for playing a part in Benazir Bhutto's assassination, had to say, reveals Pakistani journalist Amir Mir's new novel, The Bhutto Murder Trail from Waziristan to GHQ. Mir, a close aide of the slain former prime minister reconstructs her murder from off-the-record conversations, edited bits of interview tapes, and anecdotal evidence. An extract

Even after her tragic assassination, Benazir Bhutto's old emails and interviews are still in circulation. In these, she had named her would-be assassins. Addressing his first ever press conference after the murder, Asif Zardari made public her email to Mark Siegel, in which she had mentioned the name of her would-be killers.

'The said email should be treated as Benazir Bhutto's dying declaration. She talks about her murderers from her grave and it is up to the world to listen to the echoes,' he said. Bhutto had sent the email, two months before her death, to her US adviser and longtime friend, Mark Siegel, who was to make this email public only if she were killed. Mark Siegel subsequently forwarded Bhutto's email to Wolf Blitzer of the CNN in Washington.

A Pakistani police commando walks past a poster of slain opposition leader
Benazir Bhutto outside the Parliament building in Islamabad. Bhutto's
assassination in January 2008, as she left a campaign rally in Rawalpindi,
triggered riots and unrest that left at least 58 people dead and forced
general elections to be delayed by almost six weeks until February 18.
Pic/AFP Photo

She wrote to Mark Siegel: Nothing will, God willing, happen. Just wanted you to know if it does in addition to the names in my letter to General Musharraf of Oct 16th, I would hold Musharraf responsible. I have been made to feel insecure by his minions and there is no way what is happening, in terms of stopping me from taking private cars or using tinted windows or giving jammers or four police mobile outriders to cover all sides could happen without him.

Bhutto had sent the email eight days after the Karachi attack on her welcome procession, pointing out that she had not been accorded the requested improvements to her security and was being prevented from making arrangements that were vital to her safety. Her requests, even those routed through her contacts in the USA, had not evoked a positive response from the Musharraf regime, although it was well aware of the risks she faced.

According to Mark Siegel, Bhutto had asked for permission to bring in trained security personnel from abroad, but the Pakistan government denied them visas, again and again. A US-based security agency, Blackwater, and a London-based firm, Armor Group, which guards UK diplomats in the Middle East, were not allowed to protect her. Bhutto urged Musharraf to improve her security after the Karachi suicide bomb attack, besides requesting American and British diplomats to pressurise Musharraf to provide her with adequate security. But Musharraf had taken no action.

Benazir Bhutto's security concerns and Musharraf's refusal to address them have also been highlighted by a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, Ron Suskind, in his book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism.

Published in August 2008, the book makes several disclosures about the Musharraf-Bhutto conversations and includes Musharraf's comment, 'You should understand somethingu00a0-- your security is based on the state of our relationship.' The writer disclosed that the US intelligence agencies had tapped Bhutto's phone calls, prior to her arrival in Pakistan, in a bid to play their cut-throat games more effectively. About those who were tapping Bhutto's calls, Suskind writes, 'What they'll overlook is the context and her tone in the many calls they eavesdrop onu00a0-- overlook the fact that she's scared and preparing for the possibility of imminent death.'

The book disclosed details of Bhutto's meeting with Senator John Kerry, during the course of which she had requested the US to ensure that proper arrangements were made for her security, and he replied that the 'United States is generally hesitant to ensure the protection of anyone who is not a designated leader'.

In a subsequent interview on 15 August 2008 with Amy Goodman, an American broadcast journalist, Ron Suskind quoted Benazir Bhutto as having told him: 'Look at my situation. I'm now going to wash away the entire Musharraf power structure, because the fact is, I'm rising, and he's plummeting.

That's one opponent. Also, the jihadis are realising that I might create a counterpoint in this whole region to bin Laden. So now I've got two enemies, of course, who have been in an unholy allianceu00a0-- dictatorial power, messianic radicalismu00a0-- for many years, and I have no protection. Why? Because Dick Cheney won't make the phone call. We go on and on about this.

Why? Explain it to me, the idea that they assured me Cheney would make the call to Musharraf simply to say, "You're the dictator, make sure she is protected. She has to make it to Election Day. If she doesn't, we're going to hold you responsible."'

Alluding to Musharraf's message to Bhutto that her safety was based on the state of their relationship, Suskind said: 'It was all but like a Mafia threat. And this is something that the US, frankly, deep down understands, too. They let this process unfold. And ultimately, folks around Bhutto now are saying that she was abandoned by America.'

As is typical with the Bush administration, before any evidence had been offered, and with the key facts about the whole gruesome episode still in question, it unequivocally ascribed Benazir Bhutto's assassination to al-Qaeda or a likeminded Islamic group.

All President Bush seemed interested in was reminding Pakistanis how significant the upcoming national elections were in offering a way out for Musharraf's ongoing crisis of legitimacy. That the elections were being stage-managed by Musharraf was hardly a secret, and even Bhutto herself remarked that they would be rigged. But Bush insisted that Pakistan 'honour Benazir Bhutto's memory by continuing with the democratic process for which she so bravely gave her life'.

By linking Bhutto's killing to al-Qaeda, President Bush conveniently achieved several goals. First he reinforced the myth about al-Qaeda, something that was very useful to Washington at a time of growing global scepticism over the real intent of its War on Terrorism, besides making Musharraf more valuable to Washington. Secondly, it gave Musharraf a plausible scapegoat to blame for the convenient elimination of a serious political rival, who stood in the way of his consolidation of one-man rule.

In a related development, a well-known American investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, claimed in an interview on 12 May 2009 that a special death squad had assassinated Benazir Bhutto on the orders of the former US vice president, Dick Cheney. In an interview to an Arab television channel, the Washington-based Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winner who writes for The New Yorker magazine and a few other prominent media outlets, also claimed that the former vice president had been running an 'executive assassination ring' throughout the Bush years.

The cell reported directly to Cheney. Hersh indicated that this unit killed Bhutto because, in an interview with Al-Jazeera TV on 2 November 2007, she had said she believed that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden wasu00a0 already dead, and that Sheikh Ahmed Omar Saeed, an al-Qaeda linked activist imprisoned in Pakistan for killing US journalist Daniel Pearl, had also murdered Osama bin Laden.

Hersh said that the interviewer, veteran British journalist David Frost, deleted her assertion from the interview. Hersh believed Benazir Bhutto was assassinated because the US leadership did not want Laden to be declared dead.

The Bush administration wanted to keep Osama bin Laden alive to justify the presence of the US Army in Afghanistan to combat the Taliban. He also claimed that the same assassination squad, led by General McChrystal, had killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri as well as the army chief of that country. Hariri and the Lebanese army chief were allegedly murdered for not safeguarding American interests and refusing to allow the US to set up military bases in Lebanon.

Earlier, on 10 March 2009, Seymour Hersh had mentioned in a seminar at the University of Minnesota that the unit Cheney headed was very deeply involved in extra-legal operations. 'Congress has no oversight of it. It is an executive assassination wing, essentially.

And it's been going on and on and on. And just today in The Times there is a story saying that its leader, a three-star admiral named McRaven, ordered a stop to certain activities because there were so many collateral deaths. It's been going under President Bush's authority. They've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us.'

Soon after Seymour Hersh's speech, CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked Dick Cheney's former national security adviser, John Hannah, about Hersh's claim: 'Is there a list of terrorists, suspected terrorists out there who can be assassinated?'

Hannah responded: 'There is clearly a group of people that go through a very extremely well-vetted... inter-agency process... that have committed acts of war against the United States, who are at war with the United States, or are suspected of planning operations of war against the United Statesu00a0... authority is given to the troops in the field and in certain war theatres to capture or kill those individuals. That is certainly true.'
When Wolf Blitzer queried the legality of such acts, John Hannah said: 'There is no question that in a theatre of war, when we are at war, and... there is no doubt, we are still at war against al-Qaeda in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and on the Pakistani border, that our troops have the authority to go after and capture and kill the enemy, including the leadership of the enemy.'

So would it be too wild to speculate that the then Pakistani and American administration conspired together to murder Benazir Bhutto? On his part, when asked at a media briefing in Islamabad on 1 January 2008 if he had blood on his hands, General Musharraf said that although it was below his dignity to take cognisance of the question he, nevertheless, wanted to give a public answer: 'I am not a feudal (ruler), I am not a tribal. I have been brought up in a very educated and civilised family with... values... My family is not a family which believes in killing people... assassinating, intriguing. That is all that I want to say.'

On 3 January 2008, General Musharraf admitted for the first time that Bhutto may have been shot by a gunman, but said that she alone bore the responsibility for her death. Musharraf said in an interview on CBS's show, 'Sixty Minutes', that he had personally told Benazir Bhutto that she was under threat and that, in the circumstances, she should not have done the things that she did on that fateful day.

She should not have stood up in her car as she left the rally. 'For standing up outside the car, I think it was she to blame aloneu00a0-- nobody else. Responsibility is hers.' He also said: 'I had asked her not to come before the electionu00a0... that we will arrangeu00a0-- then she could come after the election, which she had agreed. But then she decided to come all of a sudden. She did not stick to her agreements with me to an extent.... It upset me a little.'