Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is the “killer” of Benazir Bhutto, her son and Pakistan Peoples Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto said on her 10th death anniversary on Wednesday, Dawn reported.
Bilawal said that he held the man who pulled her security, and not the man who pulled the trigger, responsible for his mother’s death. Speaking to a crowd of supporters in Pakistan’s Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, Bilawal said, “Musharraf is a murderer!”
Benazir Bhutto was party chief and Pakistan’s 11th prime minister. At the time of her death, she was making a bid for her third term as prime minister. She was assassinated in a gun-and-bomb attack during an election campaign event on December 27, 2007, in Rawalpindi. Musharraf was the president at the time.
“Musharraf exploited this entire situation to assassinate my mother,” Bilawal told BBC. “He purposely sabotaged her security so that she would be assassinated and taken off the scene.”
Bilawal Bhutto added that details about his mother’s assassination were being held back to protect Musharraf. He said Musharraf had also directly threatened Benazir Bhutto and told her that her security was based on the status of her relationship with him.
He also accused the current government of undoing Benazir’s legacy. “They’ve weakened the democracy and parliament. Small provinces are being isolated from the federal government. This is a murderous government,” he said, according to Dawn.
In August, a special anti-terrorism court in Pakistan had declared Musharraf an absconder in the assassination case and ordered authorities to seize his property. It also acquitted five others and sentenced two senior police officers to 17 years in prison.
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