Benazir Bhutto, twice Prime Minister of Pakistan, now lies under six feet of earth in Garhi Khuda Bux, her ancestral village, in a grave next to her equally mercurial father, the late Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto


Now she is buried. But I suspect that the Benazir saga is far from over. Indeed, just as all of Pakistan’s politics after Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s hanging was contextualized by his hanging, all of Pakistan’s politics after Benazir’s assasination is likely to be contextualized by Benazir’s assasination.

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Bhutto killing blamed on al-Qaeda

Pakistan says it has intelligence that al-Qaeda assassinated opposition politician Benazir Bhutto at an election rally on Thursday.

Citing what it said was an intercepted phone call, the interior ministry said the killing had been ordered by an "al-Qaeda leader", Baitullah Mehsud.

The BBC's security correspondent, Frank Gardner, says it is too early to establish the truth of what happened.

Ms Bhutto has been buried in her family tomb amid scenes of mass grieving.

Video of her last moments before the attack in Rawalpindi was shown at the news conference given in Islamabad by the interior ministry.

According to the ministry, the primary cause of Ms Bhutto's death appears to have been a knock on her head as she tried to duck her attacker, and not bullets or shrapnel. Her party denies this.

Pakistani security forces are on high alert, with at least 31 people killed in protests by Bhutto supporters across the country since the assassination.

Conflicting versions
Baitullah Mehsud is a tribal leader in Pakistan's South Waziristan region.

Pakistani intelligence services intercepted a call from him in which he allegedly congratulated another militant after Ms Bhutto's death, interior ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema told reporters.

There was, he added, "irrefutable evidence that al-Qaeda, its networks and cohorts were trying to destabilise Pakistan".

There have now been so many conflicting versions coming out of Pakistan of how Benazir Bhutto died and who sent the assassin that it is hard for anyone to build up an accurate picture, our security correspondent says.

Both al-Qaeda and the Taleban are perfectly plausible culprits since they hated everything the secular Ms Bhutto stood for, he adds.

But critics of President Pervez Musharraf are unlikely to be convinced by his government's insistence that it has proof al-Qaeda ordered the murder.

'Pack of lies'
Brig Cheema said Ms Bhutto had smashed her head against a lever of her car's sun roof.

She was, he said, trying to shelter inside the car from the gunman, who set off a bomb after opening fire with a gun.

A surgeon who treated her, Dr Mussadiq Khan, said earlier she may have died from a shrapnel wound while Ms Bhutto's security adviser, Rehman Malik, said she had been shot in the neck and chest.

Farooq Naik, a senior official in Ms Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, said the government's explanation of her death was a "pack of lies".

"Two bullets hit her, one in the abdomen and one in the head," he told AFP news agency.

Brig Cheema added that all possible security arrangements had been put in place for Ms Bhutto.

Her supporters say the government did not do enough to protect her.

After a previous attempt on her life in October that killed 130 people, Ms Bhutto accused rogue elements of the Pakistani intelligence services of involvement.

Unrest
Ms Bhutto was buried next to her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the family mausoleum near their home village, Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, in Sindh province, as thousands of mourners attended.

Rioters in Peshawar shouted slogans against President Musharraf

Many European and Asian countries have warned their citizens against travelling to Pakistan because of concern that the killing of Benazir Bhutto could provoke more violence.

Rioting and unrest have been reported across the country.

Six bodies were found among the remains of a factory set on fire in Karachi

At least one passenger train was set ablaze in Sindh Province and a number of railway stations were reportedly burnt as security forces in the province were ordered to shoot rioters on sight

In the city of Multan in Punjab province, a mob ransacked seven banks and torched a petrol station

Other cities across Pakistan are at a virtual standstill.

Schools, businesses and transport are all closed, and people are reluctant to step out during the three days of national mourning declared by Mr Musharraf.

In another development, a bomb attack on an election meeting of the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League in Swat, north-western Pakistan, killed at least nine people including a candidate on Friday.

Election questions
A spokesman for the President Musharraf has said it is too early to decide whether the parliamentary election on 8 January should be postponed.

Mohammad Mian Soomro, the caretaker prime minister, urged all political parties to talk to the government, so that a decision could be reached by consensus.

The election is meant to pave the way for a return to democratic rule, suspended in October 1999 when the then Gen Musharraf seized power through a coup.

But opposition parties are now against the election taking the place and it is hard to see how they it would be a true test of the democratic process, the BBC's Karishma Vaswani reports.

Ms Bhutto returned from eight years of self-imposed exile in October, following an amnesty agreed with President Musharraf.

Speaking in Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for the democratic process in Pakistan to continue, without commenting on the January election date.

"The way to honour [Benazir Bhutto's] memory is to continue the democratic process in Pakistan so that the democracy that she so hoped for can emerge," she said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7163307.stm

BB buried amid mass grief, anger

LARKANA, Dec 28: Overcome with grief and shock, thousands of people converged on Garhi Khuda Bux to bury former prime minister Benazir Bhutto next to her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in her family mausoleum on Friday.

Earlier, the slain opposition leader’s body was flown to Sukkur from Rawalpindi in a C-130 plane. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, and children Bilawal (19), Bakhtawar (17) and Aseefa (14) came aboard the same plane. The body was then taken to Moenjodaro airport by helicopter.

Mourners wept inconsolably and beat their chests when Ms Bhutto’s body finally reached Naudero House. They jostled to see the coffin of their leader who lost her life while acknowledging the cheers of jubilant party activists near Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Bagh.

Ghinwa Bhutto, the estranged sister-in-law of the slain prime minister, came to Naudero House. She was accompanied by Fatima Bhutto and Zulfikar Junior.

Sanam Bhutto, the youngest daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, flew in from London. She has lost her three elder siblings to unnatural deaths. Her father was hanged in 1979 after being deposed in a military coup.







Mr Zardari and Bilawal sat in the ambulance that took the coffin, draped with the green, red and black tricolour of the PPP, to Garhi Khuda Bux from Naudero. Former Larkana nazim Khursheed Junejo drove the ambulance.

The road to the mausoleum was packed with so many Bhutto supporters that the journey of a couple of kilometres took over two hours. Mourners, who came mostly on foot, climbed the rooftop of the three-domed mausoleum.

The PPP leaders who attended the funeral included Makhdoom Amin Fahim, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Raja Pervez Ashraf, Naheed Khan, Senator Dr Safdar Abbasi, Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, Syed Qaim Ali Shah, Raza Rabbani and Taj Haidar.

Mr Zardari, Bilawal, Mr Junejo, Shahid Bhutto, Nadir Magsi and Zulfikar Junior lowered Ms Bhutto’s body in the grave.

Wearing a black dress, a tearful Bilawal laid a wreath at his mother’s grave.

Many mourners chanted slogans against President Pervez Musharraf, former Sindh chief minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim and the United States. Women wailed as men, struggling to fight off tears, said the people of Sindh had been orphaned.








Enraged protesters set fire to a post office, a utility store and a local bank branch. They also torched Khushhal Khan Khattak Express whose 10 bogies had already been set ablaze at the Shahnawaz Bhutto railway station.

In Larkana, protesters went on the rampage and torched the offices of district nazim. They burnt five vehicles including two fire brigade vehicles standing in the secretariat, sources said.

The protesters damaged gold shops in Shahi Bazaar and burnt tyres. They damaged the main Wapda office and set fire to vehicles standing there. They also set ablaze the railway office and the municipal committee offices. They also damaged the offices of the Sui Southern Gas Company and a local telecommunications company.

Rioting took place at such a scale that smouldering vehicles stood on most Larkana roads at the end of the day.







ref: http://www.dawn.com.pk/2007/12/29/top1.htm

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Recent reports proved that Ms Bhutto was killed in pre-plan shotout...

Baitullah Mehsud did not kill Benazir Bhutto: spokesman PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Dec 29 (Reuters) Al Qaeda-linked militant Baitullah Mehsud was not involved in the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, his spokesman said Saturday. “I strongly deny it. Tribal people have their own customs. We don't strike women,” Mehsud's spokesman Maulvi Omar said by telephone from an undisclosed location. The government said Friday Mehsud was responsible for Benazir's killing as she left an election rally in Rawalpindi Thursday. (First Posted @ 12:13 PST, Updated @ 12:36 PST)

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dArk-aNgL3 :)

LifE Iz gAmE pLaY iT
LiF3 Iz JoUrNey CoMpLeT iT
bUt rEmEMbeR
LifE iZ wAt u mAk3 iT

Benazir Bhutto’s assassination has shocked Pakistan and the entire world. While her remains have been buried yesterday next to her father and two brothers in the family mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Buksh, it is difficult to envisage the fallout, ramifications and implications of this brutal murder of one of Pakistan’s leading political figures being buried any time soon. From the details available so far of the incident in which she was cut down minutes after leaving an election campaign rally in Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Bagh, it appears to have been a targeted assassination. Benazir Bhutto was hit by two bullets, one in the neck, seconds before a suicide bomber blew himself up in close proximity to her vehicle. The gunman lay in wait till Benazir emerged from the sunroof of her bullet-proof vehicle to wave to a crowd of zealous supporters thronging the path of her vehicle. Such accurate marksmanship appears to bear the hallmarks of a trained shooter. The subsequent suicide blast seems to have been designed as a backup in case the marksman failed to hit her fatally. All this smacks of a well-planned conspiracy to silence one of the most eloquent voices against the country being held hostage by a small minority of fanatical terrorists operating under a false justificatory umbrella of Islam. Doctors at the Rawalpindi General Hospital where she was rushed struggled to resuscitate her, but finally surrendered to the inevitable.

The news was greeted by her supporters and all citizens throughout the country with shock, horror, grief and anger. That anger spilt over into protests and violence throughout the length and breadth of the country on Thursday. Road and rail links between Sindh, where the strongest reaction became visible, not surprisingly since the province remains the PPP’s main stronghold, and the rest of the country were cut off by protestors. Domestic flights in and out of Karachi had to be suspended for fear of disruption or worse. All the major cities of the country, Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad-Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Quetta and others witnessed outbreaks of protests, violence, damage to government and other property, arson and similar acts. As the night wore on, the angry crowds’ attention began to turn towards her funeral on Friday in Garhi Khuda Buksh, where her body was airlifted from Rawalpindi, accompanied by her husband, Asif Ali Zardari and her three children, Bilawal, Bakhtawar and Asifa, all of whom had flown in from Dubai to accompany Benazir’s body to her final resting place.

Friday dawned with the country by and large suffering from the silence of the grave, partly because of the strike call by a number of opposition political parties, including the PML(N) and the parties of the APDM, partly because the eyes of the whole country (and indeed the world) were turned towards the final rites being administered to the slain former prime minister. Nawaz Sharif, while expressing his shock and grief at the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, announced a boycott of the impending elections on January 8. However, soon after the funeral was over, the protestors were back on the streets in many parts of the country, and a familiar cycle of violent protest was re-enacted. The army, Rangers and other law enforcement forces, which were conspicuous by their absence on Thursday night, were deployed throughout the country to try and bring order back to a country wracked to the depths of its soul by the cutting down of a charismatic woman leader in whom a great many hopes resided to pull Pakistan out of the morass of terrorism and political crisis in which it has been bogged down almost throughout the outgoing year. These violent protests do not appear to be dying down, and the country is likely to see an escalating confrontation between the law enforcement agencies and the agitating crowds in the days ahead.

The government, from President Pervez Musharraf down, condemned the assassination roundly and the president in a brief statement on the electronic media announced three days of official mourning, during which the national flag would be flown at half-mast. The PPP, on the other hand, still reeling from the blow, announced the traditional 40 days of mourning. So much for the horrific events of Thursday and Friday. What is of great concern is the fallout of this dastardly terrorist act.

For one, the elections of January 8 have now been thrown into grave doubt, especially if the protests and violence do not abate. The boycott by the PML(N) has deprived the contest of one of the major electoral players, and thereby deprived the exercise of any remaining credibility or even relevance. Realising the need for applying a healing touch to the bleeding wounds of the country, the government has proposed calling an all-parties conference to take stock of the situation. Although the idea sounds good in principle, it is difficult to envisage the opposition flocking to such a moot in the obtaining circumstances, which have deepened the divide between the Musharraf dispensation and all other political forces. While the UN Security Council and many world leaders have sent a wave of condolence and condemnatory messages, the US and Britain, unsurprisingly since they are widely regarded as the main backers of a strategy of political reconciliation and transition to democracy through the impending elections, have reiterated the need for Pakistan to pay homage to Benazir Bhutto’s courageous martyrdom by proceeding with the elections on schedule, or not long after January 8. Unfortunately, the fly in the ointment is the deep mistrust (now deeper) between President Musharraf and almost all political forces except the King’s party. The president, already controversial after the events of 2007 and especially the November 3 imposition of emergency that allowed the decapitation of the superior judiciary, censorship of the media and the contested assuming of the office of president even in civilian mode, has suffered a further blow because of the assassination of the major political leader most inclined to work with him for the sake of a smooth transition to democracy. Even if the charged and perhaps motivated accusations from some political quarters of the Musharraf dispensation being responsible for the assassination are discounted as knee-jerk emotionalism, the government cannot escape the charge of responsibility for the major lapse of security and failure to protect one of the leading political figures of the country.

Whether in these circumstances, and given the possibility of the agitation continuing, elections can be held at all, and that too on President Musharraf’s watch, must now be counted as one of the major conundrums facing the country. A period of instability is on the cards, and the outcome highly uncertain at the moment of writing these lines. While the country mourns and weeps for a courageous young woman leader cut down in untimely fashion by the perpetrators of terrorism, there are many whose eyes will be full of worry and tears for the future of the country.

http://thepost.com.pk/EditorialNews....36094&catid=10

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" Woods are lovely dark and deep But i have promises to keep And miles to go before i sleep "

Emotions run high as Benazir laid to rest

GARHI KHUDA BAKSH: Many chanted for justice and blamed the government for their heroine’s death. Others consoled each other as they wept.

The funeral for slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Friday was filled with the rawest emotions for the hundreds of thousands who converged on her family’s mausoleum here.

People crammed inside the cavernous hall, throwing rose petals on the coffin. Some cried, others chanted “Benazir is alive”, as her body was laid to rest. One man sobbed uncontrollably, crying, “My sister has gone”. Another fainted as several thousand people jostled to get a last glimpse.

Benazir’s son, Bilawal, and her husband Asif Ali Zardari, who wore a traditional white Sindhi cap and appeared composed, helped lift the coffin into the grave.

A vast crowd congregated outside to pay its last respects, lining up in hundreds of rows for the prayers and later filing in to throw sand on the grave.

They had arrived by tractors, buses, cars and jeeps that were parked in dusty fields surrounding the mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, where her father, former prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto is also buried.

Party leaders tried to pacify the crowd and urged them to stop.

Draped in the flag of her Pakistan People’s Party, the coffin had been carried about five kilometres (three miles) in a white ambulance from Benazir’s ancestral home to the vast marble mausoleum, passing a burning passenger train on the way.

Signboards that had been erected two months ago to mark Benazir’s return from exile to Pakistan still dotted the route. On one, someone had scrawled, “Benazir you are the hope for the poor”.

In front of the mausoleum, with its three domes, mourners wept and hugged each other.

Some chanted slogans against figures in the pro-government political party, as they waited for the coffin to be shifted inside. Others shouted, “As long as the moon and sun are alive, so is the name of Bhutto.”

People who gathered for Friday’s funeral repeatedly chanted slogans against the former top elected officials in Sindh and Punjab provinces, who are members of the ruling, pro-Musharraf party.

Bhutto supporters suspect those officials were complicit in attacks on the opposition leader, which the government denies.

“Why is it only Sindhi prime ministers are assassinated or killed?” said Rahmatullah, 25, who goes by one name, referring to the demise of the Bhuttos and the country’s first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, who was shot to death in 1951.

All three died in Rawalpindi.

“Now we will bring revolution,” Rahmatullah said.

Another mourner disagreed.

“No we need Pakistan. It was Benazir’s mission to protect Pakistan and we will complete her mission,” said Eman Ali Shah.




ref: http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=11941

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Another Bhutto assassinated

By Haider K. Nizamani


BEGUM Nusrat Bhutto should thank the state of her health for sparing her the agony of having to cope with the shock of the assassination of a daughter. In Benazir she has lost the third of her four children — all of whom fell victim to violence. It is the fourth Bhutto whose assassinated body was received by their ancestral graveyard on Friday in as many decades.

It all started with the judicial murder of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979. Then came the mysterious death of his younger son Shahnawaz in the French Riviera in 1985 which was followed by the cold blooded murder of Mir Murtaza in 1996 in Karachi right in front of their family home in Clifton. And now Benazir.

Benazir Bhutto’s untimely and tragic death has created a huge void in Pakistan’s political scene that will be difficult to fill anytime soon. She led the party that has secured a majority of popular vote in almost every election held in the country since 1988. For her supporters Benazir was more of a family member than just a political leader. People wept with her when she mourned the death of her father Z.A. Bhutto in 1979. When millions thronged the streets in 1986 to welcome her, one of the oft-repeated slogans in Sindh used to be “Tuhinji Bhen (Your sister), Muhinji Bhen (My sister), Benazir Benazir!” Unsurprisingly most are grieving today as though they have lost a sister.

Benazir Bhutto’s assassination is undoubtedly the kind of tragedy our country and the region are painfully familiar with. As with other political murders of such stature, this one will have a far-reaching impact on the political milieu.

Some of the immediate repercussions at the national level are already discernible. Nawaz Sharif has decided to boycott the upcoming elections. This is likely to have a snowballing effect. The PPP leadership is understandably in a state of shock and what its future course of action will be it is too early to say. At present the party has decided to observe 40 days of mourning.George W. Bush in his statement has called for the electoral process to go ahead but the US administration may have to re-visit that clarion call in the light of realities of the present Pakistani political scene. Ms Bhutto’s assassination is a grave setback to the Washington supported power-sharing arrangement between Pervez Musharraf and the slain PPP leader. Ironically the very electoral process in which she had chosen to participate, at the risk of alienating the anti-Musharraf coalition, could now be derailed due to her death.

If and when the elections are held, will the PPP be able to translate sympathy for Benazir Bhutto into an electoral victory as the Congress Party in India had managed to do in the aftermath of Mrs Indira Gandhi’s assassination? Mrs Gandhi was killed by her Sikh bodyguards in October 1984. Her party rode on the crest of a sympathy wave to achieve a landslide victory for Rajiv Gandhi, her only surviving son, in the elections which followed in December of the same year. But the difference remains that the Pakistan People’s Party is institutionally a weak organisation as compared with the Congress.

Secondly, no scion of Ms Bhutto is old enough to enter the political arena at this stage. Therefore, in spite of groundswell of sympathy, the PPP is unlikely to translate it into an electoral landslide.

Will we ever come to know who killed Benazir Bhutto and why? Unless the perpetrators of the crime choose to come forward and claim responsibility, don’t expect much from our official agencies. The pessimistic prognosis is based on the track record of Pakistan’s history in such cases. Liaquat Ali Khan, the country’s first prime minister, was killed in the same park in 1951 where Ms Bhutto was felled by the bullets from her assassin’s gun. To date that murder is shrouded in mystery. More than half-a-century later, the twice-elected prime minister has met the same fate.

Unnatural deaths of political titans in South Asia have often led to jubilation, often muted one, in the opponents’ camps. Recall General Ziaul Haq’s death in 1988 in Pakistan and Mrs Gandhi’s murder in 1984. But adversity at times can bring out the best in people’s collective character as it did in Pakistan after the 2005 earthquake. Benazir Bhutto’s murder is of the same magnitude in terms of its political intensity for the Pakistani polity. Political parties have unanimously condemned the killing.

Rajiv Gandhi lost his life in 1991 at the hands of a Tamil suicide bomber while campaigning in south India. The gruesome act dissipated support in India for a separate homeland for Sri Lankan Tamils. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto may stir up similar feelings against proponents of political violence in Pakistan.

This has been annus horribilis for Pakistan on many counts. The death of Benazir makes it more so for her three children. The perpetrators of the crime certainly did not think of the three youngsters when they decided to blow their mother up. Bobby Sands, the Irish member of the UK’s parliament who died when on hunger strike in 1981 at the age of 27, had said, ‘Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.’

Benazir’s radiant smile on the eve of Dec 27 will for ever be etched on the minds of her children and her political supporters. Pakistanis can avenge Benazir’s killing by sticking to the exemplary pacific nature that always have been the hallmark of the PPP’s popular political culture.

Ref: http://dawn.com/2007/12/29/ed.htm

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My ALLAH it is enough for my respect that I m "Your" person & it is enough for my pride that "You" are my GOD."You" are exactly the way I desire.Thus please mould me the way "You" desire.

Dear all,

After the assassination Benazir Bhutto, I am keeping a keen eye over the development of this issue. I have written few post about it on my blog and if you are interested you can click the link below of the particular articles given below:

Please give me the feedback since you are one of the fine brains around. Discuss the developments and to what do you think about the issue.

best
Farrukh


[Links Removed]

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Dr Farrukh Raza

Persistence is Victory!

Benazir Bhutto's life a sweeping epic of blood, controversy

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Benazir Bhutto was many things -- zealous guardian of her dead father's legacy, aristocratic populist, accused rogue, even one of People magazine's 50 most beautiful people. And in the end, she was a victim of roiling passions in the nation she sought to lead for a third time.

To the West, she was the appealing and glamorous face of Pakistan -- a trailblazing feminist, the first woman to lead a Muslim nation in modern times -- though her aura was dimmed by accusations of corruption.

But to many Pakistanis, she was a leader who spoke for them, their needs and their hopes.

Even her worst critics would say that "she was a masterful politician," said Zaffar Abbas, an editor for the respected Dawn newspaper. She knew "what the people of this country wanted."

"If you asked an ordinary person what they achieved when Benazir Bhutto was in power, they would say at least she gave us a voice and she talked about us and our problems. That was her real achievement," Abbas said.

Her life was a sprawling epic. Her father, Pakistan's president and then prime minister, was hanged; one brother died mysteriously, the other in a shootout. She spent five years imprisoned by her father's tormentors, mostly in solitary confinement, before rising twice to the office of prime minister.

She fled before her conviction on corruption charges, living abroad for eight years. She could have lived there comfortably, far from the cauldron of Pakistani politics, but chose not to do so. And when she returned in October to marshal opposition to President Pervez Musharraf, a suicide attacker targeted her homecoming parade in Karachi. More than 140 people died.

The 54-year-old Bhutto escaped injury. "We will not be deterred," she said then. And on the hustings, she celebrated her survival.

"Bhutto is alive! Bhutto is alive! Bhutto is alive!" she shouted at a rally in December.

Like the Nehru-Gandhi family that has long been a force in the politics of neighboring India, the Bhuttos have held a central role in Pakistan for nearly a half-century.

Benazir's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was the son of a wealthy landowning family in southern Pakistan and founder of the Pakistan People's Party. With a populist, pro-democracy message, he rose to power in 1971.

But six years later, he was deposed by the military. In 1979, he was executed by the government of Gen. Mohammad Zia-ul Haq after his much-disputed conviction on charges of arranging the murder of the father of a political opponent.

A day before he was hanged, his daughter visited him in prison.

"I told him on my oath in his death cell, I would carry on his work," Bhutto would recall.

But at the time and for years after, Benazir Bhutto could not fight for her father's cause -- she was in jail or under house arrest.

The elder Bhutto had sent his daughter to study politics and government at Harvard and then at Oxford, where she was elected to lead the prestigious debating society, the Oxford Union. Beautiful, charismatic and articulate, she was a dangerous opponent for the military government.

Her youngest brother, Shahnawaz, organized opposition from France, but he died under mysterious circumstances in his apartment on the Riviera in 1980; the family insisted he was poisoned, but no charges were brought. Released in 1984 to seek medical treatment for a serious ear infection in London, Benazir established a People's Party office there, and waited for an opportunity to strike back.

Two years later, she returned to lead mass rallies calling for Zia to step down and allow a civilian government and elections. He refused. But in 1988, the strongman died in an explosion on his plane.

Benazir rallied her father's party, only to find that she was being opposed by her brother, Murtaza -- and that her mother was backing him. "In our family, it was always a joke that my mother had a soft spot for my brother," she told The New York Times in 1994.

Still, Benazir Bhutto won on a platform of "food, clothing and shelter for all." And just months after giving birth to her first child, she took the office that was taken from her father.

Twenty months later, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dissolved parliament and removed her from office, citing abuse of power. The new army-backed government filed charges of corruption against her, while Islamic clerics tried to get a court to bar her from running in elections. She was a bad Muslim, they said.

"Anyone who supports the Pakistan People's Party will not enter heaven," a Muslim cleric in Lahore, Abdul Qadir, told a Friday prayer congregation ahead of the October 1990 elections.

She lost the election to Nawaz Sharif (who, years later, also would be exiled and return to challenge the Musharraf government). His time in office was also short-lived because of more accusations of corruption. Under pressure, he resigned in 1993; Bhutto, by then a mother of three children, won another second term as prime minister in October 1993.

In 1996, her government fell in the face of accusations of nepotism and economic mismanagement.

Around the world, Bhutto was a feminist heroine. And in her campaigns, she advocated new services for women and opposed sexual discrimination, though few measures were adopted under her government.

In her personal life, Bhutto surprised many by agreeing to an arranged marriage in 1987 with Karachi businessman Asif Ali Zardari. She said that as the leader of a Muslim party, she was not free to marry for love, which would have "destroyed my political career," she told The New York Times in 1994.

But her marriage to Zardari would play a major role in her downfall.

Over the years, the couple would be accused of charging millions of dollars in "commissions" from foreign companies. Zardari was called "Mr. 10 Percent" during Bhutto's first term because of these alleged kickbacks; in her second term, the take and the monicker were upgraded to "Mr. 40 Percent."

Zardari spent eight years in Pakistani prisons before his release in 2004, though he was never convicted on any charge, and both he and Bhutto said the accusations were trumped up and political.

"I never influenced the awarding of a contract, and until my dying day I'll stand by it. They have tried to ruin me because they want to ruin the concept of a pluralistic, liberal Pakistan. To be accused of robbing, that really pains me," she said in 1999.

Switzerland froze more than $13 million in the couple's accounts, and convicted Bhutto of money laundering (the conviction was thrown out when she contested it).

Zardari also, briefly, was accused of engineering the 1996 death of Murtaza Bhutto, who died in a gunbattle with police in Karachi. His death contributed to the fall of Benazir's government a month later.

Bhutto tried for a third term and lost; she left Pakistan in 1999, just before a court convicted her of corruption and banned her from politics.

The verdict was later quashed, but she stayed away. She spent much of the time in London and in Dubai with her children and her ailing mother -- the same mother who once opposed her political career.

Then Musharraf signed an amnesty, halting any corruption charges against her and others. And she decided to return to Pakistan and the political arena once more. She was briefly placed under house arrest when Musharraf declared a state of emergency this fall.

As she had done before, she campaigned on social welfare issues, occasionally mentioning the anti-terrorist message that had made her so appealing to American officials. Last week, after she addressed a rally in her husband's hometown of Nawab Shah, she was in a relaxed and upbeat mood.

"It feels great to be back home," she said. "A visit to every city is like a new experience for me. I'm just overwhelmed with emotion. I feel like I have been given a new life to be once more amongst my people."

She was a survivor, and proud of it. Thirteen years before, when a reporter from the Times suggested that her life was the stuff of Greek drama, she laughed.

"Well, I hope not so tragic," she said. "Don't all Greek dramas end in tragedy?"


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An Islamic militant group said Saturday it had no link to Benazir Bhutto's killing and the opposition leader's aides accused the government of a cover-up, disputing the official account of her death.

The government stood firmly by its account of Thursday's assassination and insisted it needed no foreign help in any investigation.

"This is not an ordinary criminal matter in which we require assistance of the international community. I think we are capable of handling it," said Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema.

Bhutto's aides said they doubted militant commander Baitullah Mehsud was behind the attack on the opposition leader and said the government's claim that she died when she hit her head on the sunroof of her vehicle was "dangerous nonsense."

Cheema said the government's account was based on "nothing but the facts"

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton called for an independent, international investigation into Bhutto's death - perhaps by the United Nations - saying Friday there was "no reason to trust the Pakistani government."

Attackers opened fire at a motorcade of Bhutto's supporters as they returned to Karachi after her funeral, killing one man and wounding two, said Waqar Mehdi, a spokesman for Bhutto's party. The government said mass rioting has killed 38 people and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage.

In Rawalpindi, thousands of Bhutto supporters spilled onto the streets after a prayer ceremony for her, throwing stones and clashing with police who fired tear gas to try and subdue the crowd.

President Pervez Musharraf told his top security officials that those looting and plundering "must be dealt with firmly and all measures be taken to ensure (the) safety and security of the people," the Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

Pakistan's election commission called an emergency meeting for Monday to discuss the violence's impact on Jan. 8 parliamentary elections.

Nine election offices in Bhutto's home province of Sindh in the south were burned to the ground, along with voter rolls and ballot boxes, the commission said in a statement. The violence also hampered the printing of ballot papers, training of poll workers and other pre-election logistics, the statement said.

The U.S. government, which sees nuclear-armed Pakistan as a crucial ally in the war on terror, has pushed Musharraf to keep the election on track to promote stability, moderation and democracy in Pakistan, American officials said.

Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro said Friday the government had no immediate plans to postpone the election, despite the violence and the decision by Nawaz Sharif, another opposition leader, to boycott the poll.

Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party also called a meeting Sunday to decide whether to participate in the vote. Her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that their son would read a message left by Bhutto and addressed to the party in event of her death.

Roads across Bhutto's southern Sindh province were littered with burning vehicles, smoking reminders of the continuing chaos since her assassination Thursday. Factories, stores and restaurants were set ablaze in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi, where 17 people have been killed and dozens injured, officials said.

Army, police and paramilitary troops patrolled the nearly deserted streets of Bhutto's home city of Larkana, where rioting left shops at a jewelry market smoldering.

The government blamed Bhutto's killing on al-Qaida and Taliban militants operating with increasing impunity in the lawless tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. It released a transcript Friday of a purported conversation between Mehsud and another militant, apparently discussing the assassination.

"It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her," Mehsud said, according to the transcript.

But a spokesman for Mehsud, Maulana Mohammed Umer, denied the militant was involved in the attack and dismissed the allegations as "government propaganda."

"The fact is that we are only against America, and we don't consider political leaders of Pakistan our enemy," he said in a telephone call he made to The Associated Press from the tribal region of South Waziristan, adding that he was speaking on instructions from Mehsud.

Cheema said the government had evidence to back its claim.

"I don't think anybody has the capability to carry out such suicide attacks except for those people," he said.

Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party accused the government of trying to frame Mehsud, saying the militant - through emissaries - had previously told Bhutto he was not involved in the Karachi bombing.

"The story that al-Qaida or Baitullah Mehsud did it appears to us to be a planted story, an incorrect story, because they want to divert the attention," said Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Bhutto's party.

After the Karachi attack, Bhutto accused elements in the ruling pro-Musharraf party of plotting to kill her. The government denied the claims. Babar said Bhutto's allegations were never investigated.

Bhutto was killed Thursday evening when a suicide attacker shot at her and then blew himself up as she left a rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi near Islamabad. The attack killed about 20 others as well. Authorities initially said she died from bullet wounds, and a surgeon who treated her said the impact from shrapnel on her skull killed her.

But Cheema said she was killed when she tried to duck back into the armored vehicle during the attack, and the shock waves from the blast smashed her head into a lever attached to the sunroof, fracturing her skull, he said.

"We gave you absolute facts, nothing but the facts," he said. "It was corroborated by the doctors' report. It was corroborated by the evidence collected."

Bhutto's spokeswoman Sherry Rehman, who was in the vehicle with her boss, disputed the government's version.

"To hear that Ms. Bhutto fell from an impact from a bump on a sunroof is absolutely rubbish. It is dangerous nonsense, because it implies there was no assassination attempt," she told the BBC.

"There was a clear bullet wound at the back of the neck. It went in one direction and came out another," she said. "My entire car is coated with her blood, my clothes, everybody - so she did not concuss her head against the sun roof."

The government said it was forming two inquiries into Bhutto's death, one to be carried out by a high court judge and another by security forces.