The first female prime minister of a Muslim nation, Pakistan’s slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was an aristocrat embraced by the poor who said her own life mirrored Pakistan’s “turbulence, its tragedies and its triumphs”.
During her career, Bhutto, a two-term prime minister, was celebrated in the west as a beacon of democracy, and much feted for her glamorous reputation. People Magazine named her one of the world’s 50 most beautiful people. In the region, she was equally idolised by supporters as a champion for women’s rights, and attacked by opponents for corruption, incompetence and nepotism.
“I didn’t choose this life, it chose me,” she wrote in her 1988 memoir, Daughter of the East.
The 54-year-old graduate of Oxford and Harvard was killed on 27 December 2007, little more than two months after returning from exile as she campaigned to return to power.
It was during one of her public rallies, leading up to the 2008 elections, that Bhutto was first attacked by terrorists who had planted two bombs in the crowd. Bhutto survived that attack, which killed 149 people, but in another rally two months later, on 27 December in Rawalpindi, her car came under fire, before a suicide bomber detonated nearby. However, her party denied those claims, insisting that she died from gunshot wounds.
One of the most controversial trials in Pakistani history has ended, with former military dictator Pervez Musharraf declared a fugitive and his property ordered confiscated after he failed to show in court over the assassination 10 years ago of Benazir Bhutto.
Former president and military ruler Musharraf is alleged to have been part of a broad conspiracy to have his political rival killed before elections. He has denied the allegation.
The judge also found two police officers guilty of “mishandling the crime scene”, the court official said, making them the only people to have been convicted over the assassination.
By failing to bring its most prominent suspect, ex-president Musharraf, to justice, the anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi set “a dangerous precedent,” said Saroop Ijaz, a lawyer and researcher with Human Rights Watch in Pakistan. “This is a farce. Musharraf is in plain sight. And he regularly appears on television.”
But he has been in self-imposed exile in Dubai ever since a travel ban was lifted three years later.
“10 years later and we still await justice. Abettors punished but those truly guilty of my mothers murder roam free,” one of Bhutto’s daughters, Aseefa, said on Twitter. “There will be no justice till Pervez Musharraf answers for his crimes!”
Bhutto’s son, Bilawal, called the result “disappointing and unacceptable”.
The judge also acquitted five men who had been accused of being Taliban militants involved in the conspiracy to kill Bhutto on December 27, 2007.
By blaming security forces for Bhutto’s murder, Thursday’s verdict gives some credence to Bhutto’s supporters, though to many of them, justice cannot be served until Musharraf is brought home to stand trial.
