PRESS STATEMENT ON BHUTTO BY IPCI

In an endless cycle of perpetual violence, opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was brutally murdered on the 27th December 2007, in a suicide attack in Rawalpindi, being the headquarters of the military-supported and US funded Inter-Services Intelligence. After being shot twice in the neck, the assassin blew himself to smithereens, causing the resultant deaths of fourteen others.

Hours after she had returned home in October after eight years of self-imposed exile, a suicide bomber killed approximately 150 people in an attack targeting her motorcade in the streets of Karachi. “They might try to assassinate me” Bhutto had informed the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Aswat newspaper before she set out back to Pakistan. “I have prepared my family and loved ones for any possibility.”

Becoming the first female prime minister in the Muslim world when she was elected in 1988, deposed in 1990, re-elected in 1993, and ousted again in 1996 amid charges of corruption and mismanagement, Bhutto whose first name means “unique”, led a life indicative of the tumult that is modern Pakistan today. Oxford-educated and the daughter of Pakistan’s first popularly elected leader, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, her mission commenced in 1977 when army chief Zia-ul-Haq overthrew him. Bhutto is on record as saying that she would allow US forces to hit Al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistani territory were she in power. Nevertheless, it is a well-known fact that her popularity stakes amongst the masses had increased dramatically over the past few months and she was poised to take over leadership in Pakistan from the dictatorial Musharraf in the January elections.

Whatever the motive for her assassination, it is clear that fingers will invariably be pointed towards the Musharraf government and the Inter-Services Intelligence who obviously will benefit in some respect from her killing and massacre of 14 civilians. The Islamic propagation Center International strongly condemns the shocking assassination and unnecessary and ceaseless loss of life that is becoming an endless norm in the land of that great philosopher poet Iqbal who must be turning in his grave.

Yusuf Ismail