Rupee News

Baitullah Mehsud killed Benazir Bhutto Wikipedia

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated by Taliban, a chargesheet filed by Pakistani investigators to an anti-terrorism court has said, while giving clean chit to former military ruler Pervez Musharraf of any involvement in the case.

The chargesheet filed by a joint investigation team of the Federal Investigation Agency to a Rawalpindi—based court on Monday held the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan responsible for the attack that killed Bhutto on December 27, 2007.

The court is conducting the trial of several suspects arrested in connection with the assassination.

The 48-page chargesheet, which came almost 35 months after the assassination, is based largely on investigations carried out during the Musharraf regime.

It gives a clean chit to Mr. Musharraf, who resigned as President in 2008, and functionaries of the then Federal and Punjab governments.

“JIT has so far not come across any evidence regarding abetting and facilitating the Dec 27, 2007, attack on Benazir Bhutto at Liaquat Bagh, Rawalpindi, by any functionary of provincial or federal government. Despite efforts, the JIT has so far not been able to examine Gen (retired) Pervez Musharraf in this regard,” the report said.

Senior unnamed officials of the Interior Ministry were quoted by the Dawn newspaper as saying that Khalid Qureshi, the head of the JIT and chief of FIA’s Special Investigation Group, tried to contact Mr. Musharraf but Interior Minister Rehman Malik stopped him by saying that the former general had “some kind of deal” with the Pakistan People’s Party-led government.

The chargesheet indicated that investigators had not conducted an interview with any serving army officer, including army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj, who was chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence at the time and Maj. Gen. Nadeem Ejaz Mian, the then Military Intelligence chief.

JIT sources told the Dawn that senior military officials did not allow the team to get the statements of these Generals.

The chargesheet said that though the Punjab government was aware of serious threats to Bhutto’s life and kept her under detention and banned her rallies, it failed on the fateful day to provide her foolproof security.

The investigators said they could not find any helpful leads from the investigation into the attack on Bhutto’s procession in Karachi on October 18, 2007, that killed about 140 people.

The chargesheet accused slain Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan chief Baitullah Mehsud and Ibadur Rehman, Abdullah and Faiz Muhammad (former students of Akora Khattak madrassa in Nowshera), Ikramullah, another militant, Aitzaz Shah, Sher Zaman, Hasnain Gul, Muhammad Rafaqat, Rasheed Ahmed, Nasrullah and Nadir of helping and financing the attack.

Keywords: Benazir Bhutto murder

Related Articles

• Should we believe the FIA report: Did TTP really kill BB? (rupeenews.com)

Image via Wikipedia

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Investigation Agency has completed its probe into the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and held the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan responsible for her death in a gun-and-bomb attack, sources in the FIA told Dawn on Monday.

The FIA is likely to submit the investigation report before an anti-terrorism court on Oct 30.

According to the sources, the FIA’s investigation team was reluctant to submit the challan before the court because it could not complete its investigation regarding three absconders in the case, Abdur Rehman, Saddam and Faiz Mohammad.

The investigation report, however, is now saying that the three absconders were killed in a military operation in tribal areas.

Five of the accused, who are all members of TTP, have already been arrested. They are Rafaqat, Hussain, Sher Zaman, Aitzaz Shah and Abdul Rashid.

The head of FIA’s team, Khalid Mehmood, told Dawn that the investigation had not been completed, but he did not deny that its report was being presented before the court on Oct 30.

But his answer raises a question that if the report is not complete, how will it be produced in a court.

The fresh investigation report has accused slain TTP chief Baitullah Mehsud of masterminding the murder of Ms Bhutto.

The UN commission, in its report, had said that blaming the TTP leader for the assassination before completion of investigations was tantamount to throwing the investigation off the scent.

The sources said the FIA team did not take statement of any public office holder who is accused in the case.

Earlier, the FIA team had decided to send a questionnaire to the interior minister because being a sitting minister he could not be summoned or interrogated. However, no questionnaire was sent to him.One of the main accused in the case, Ashfaq Anwar, who was head of Rawalpindi’s Elite Force at the time of the murder and was responsible for the security to Ms Bhutto, has gone to UK on a scholarship.

Maj (retd) Imtiaz, the personal security officer of Ms Bhutto, is at present serving as DIG Quetta. A few days ago he held a meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari.

• Part 1: Benazir Bhutto: Assassination- Internation dimension-Summary: The CIA connection…The Benazir Assassination…
• Part 2: Benazir Butto Assassination- International dimension-Details: The murder of Benazir Bhutto–the Details: Internation dimernsion
• The CIA connection on Pakistan. The CIA Connection…….The Benazir Bhutto Assassination was pre planned, the Zia model with a twist. The continued CIA involvement in Pakistan. The Great Game continues. When the Elephants dance the grass gets stamped upon…Pakistanis suffer. The purpose of this assignation is to destabilize Pakistan and find a reason to secure the Nukes
• Part 3: Benazir Butto Assassination-Local Connection: Who Assassinated Benzair Bhutto? The local connections–one promoted one killed
• Part 4: Benazir Butto Assassination-Internation dimensions: The CIA Connection…continues…in China

http://rupeenews.com/2008/01/06/the-cia-connection…-benazir-bhutto’s-assassination-was-pre-planned-the-zia-model-with-a-twistthe-continued-cia-involvement-in-pakistan-the-great-game-continues-when-the-elephants-d/

ISLAMABAD: The three-year fragile and ineffective efforts for peace between warring sectarian tribes in Kurram Agency have received an unexpected boost in the shape of the controversial Haqqani network which is now trying to play peace broker.

This has been confirmed by more than one source from among the key players involved in the peace process.

The entry of the Haqqanis in the Kurram peace talks, which date back to 2007, has surprised many. After all, the network is usually mentioned in terms of its war theatre in Afghanistan and its base in North Waziristan. The US has been pressurising the government for months to dislodge the Haqqanis from North Waziristan.

Khalil and Ibrahim, sons of the network’s founder Jalaluddin Haqqani, have reportedly been meeting tribal elders from the Kurram in Peshawar and Islamabad to end the hostilities between the local tribes and bring peace to the area which has witnessed some of the worst clashes in its history over the past three years.

The last round of talks was held in Islamabad on Oct 10. “They first turned up at a meeting held in Peshawar in the first week of September,” a tribal elder told Dawn.

This account is corroborated by another elder who adds that the two brothers were also present at the second meeting in the provincial capital on Sept 16 and then at a subsequent one in Islamabad.

It is expected that elders and mediators will put their heads together in the next few days yet again to ensure sustainable peace in the area.

Although the ongoing spate of violence dates back to 2007 and the peace efforts to 2008, the Haqqanis have been in contact with the rival tribes since early last year.

In the early phase, Haqqani’s senior ‘commanders’ negotiated with all the groups in Kurram on his behalf. But the talks remained inconclusive.

Now he has nominated his two younger sons which shows how important the region has become for the group.

However, the people of the violence-wracked Kurram are apprehensive of the aims of the mediators.

Not only are they wary of those involved in fighting in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also because they think that the involvement of the Haqqanis may not be possible without the tacit approval of the military which is reported to enjoy links with this group of Afghan militants.

Such suspicions gain credence against the backdrop of reports that members of the Haqqani clan visited Peshawar and Islamabad for the talks.

Some reports suggest that the Haqqanis have sought full authority and ‘machlaka’ (bond) from rival factions before unveiling a new peace agreement. The proposed deal will be binding on all parties.

However some groups are reluctant to give full authority and machlaka to the ‘mediators’.

Instead, they are stressing that the Murree/Islamabad agreement signed by all tribes be implemented.The government had brokered the agreement in Murree that was signed on Oct 16, 2008.

Under the agreement, the rival tribes deposited Rs20 million to the local authorities as guarantee that they would refrain from fighting in the future.

But the five-point agreement which covers all major issues could not be implemented.

Tribesmen blame a lack of interest on the part of the state organs for this.

According to some reports, the tribesmen have sought the release of the people kidnapped during an attack on a convoy on the Thall-Parachinar road in July.

The Haqqanis’ interest is not linked to the welfare of the residents of Kurram but to the tribal agency’s strategic position. The most important among all the agencies in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Kurram borders Afghanistan’s Khost province in the south, Paktia in the southwest and Nangarhar in the north, while Kabul is 90 kilometres west of Parachinar.

In fact, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, all the major groups of ‘Mujahideen’ had bases in the area.

The Haqqani group is active in Paktia, Paktika, Khost, Ghazni and Wardak, which is close to Kabul. And especially as Waziristan has become vulnerable for the network in the wake of frequent US drone attacks, the Haqqanis are desperate to find safe locations outside the agency. Kurram would prove ideal for them and this is why they are trying to reconcile with the tribes in its lower and upper parts.

They are not the first to find Kurram’s proximity to Afghanistan attractive. In fact, Taliban first came there in 2006 when they moved to Orakzai Agency and some parts of Kurram from Waziristan after signing peace deals with the government.

Baitullah Mehsud, the late chief of the banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan had deputed Hakimullah Mehsud to oversee Kurram, Khyber and Orakzai.

Another reason the Taliban shifted activities to Orakzai and Kurram was that North and South Waziristan were being closely watched by the International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan and they were facing difficulties crossing the border from there.

However, the militant groups’ move to Kurram was opposed locally. The residents of the upper parts of Kurram opposed the movement of armed men through the agency. Eventually the agency plunged into bloody clashes in April 2007, leaving over 3,000 people dead, according to unofficial estimates, while hundreds of families were displaced.

Property worth millions of rupees was destroyed in clashes and the people suffered immensely because of prolonged closure of the Thall-Parachinar road.

Unfortunately, scrappy media coverage of the clashes gave them a sectarian colour and the involvement of the Taliban was ignored, although the government did acknowledge on some occasions the involvement of a third party.

For a number of reasons, the Taliban since then have not been able to enforce their writ in Kurram. And this is why they have been forced to negotiate peace, a process which the Haqqanis have joined. Meanwhile, the residents of Kurram remain sceptical about the new initiative.

Image via Wikipedia

The so called Pakistani sycophantic  secularists are in cahoots with the war mongering Neocons and Neolibs in the US. Both blame the local Pakistanis for the terror attacks in Pakistan. It is poignant to note that almost all major Pakistani leaders have now concluded and publicly accused the US of sponsoring terror in Pakistan. The Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan directly accused America of sponsoring terror in Turkey and Pakistan.

Two former Dierector Generals of the Pakistani Intelligent services the ISI, General Durrani and General Hamid Gul have also accused the CIA Army of carrying out the attacks against Pakistan. The following narrative lists President Zardari pointing the finger at America. The Pakistani PM Mr. Syed Gilani, and the Internal Minister Mr. Rehamn has also accused “the foreign hand” in many of the explosions in Pakistan.

Bob Woodward’s book directly lists the “CIA Army’s” nefarious role in bombing in Pakistan.

Rick Rozoff has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. He prodigiously put together a patchwork of news items that display the high level of criticism conducted at the highest levels by the Pakistani leadership.

The News International, Pakistan‘s largest English-language newspaper, published a report on October 13 based on excerpts from American journalist Bob Woodward’s recently released volume “Obama’s Wars” which stated that during a trilateral summit between the presidents of the U.S., Afghanistan and Pakistan on May 6 of 2009 Pakistani head of state Asif Ali Zardari accused Washington of being behind Taliban attacks inside his country with the intent to use them so “the US could invade and seize its nuclear weapons.”
1) Shaheen Sehbai, Zardari says US behind Taliban attacks in Pakistan
The News International, October 13, 2010

http://www.thenews.com.pk/13-10-2010/Top-Story/1276.htm

According to Woodward’s account of the Pakistani president’s accusations to Khalilzad in May of last year, “Zardari dropped his diplomatic guard. He suggested that one of…two countries was arranging the attacks by the Pakistani Taliban inside his country: India or the US. Zardari didn’t think India could be that clever, but the US could. [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai had told him the US was behind the attacks, confirming the claims made by the Pakistani ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence].”
2) The News International, October 13, 2010

http://www.thenews.com.pk/13-10-2010/Top-Story/1276.htm

When Khalilzad mentioned that U.S. drone attacks inside Pakistan “were primarily meant to hunt down members of al Qaeda and Afghan insurgents, not the Pakistan Taliban,” Zardari responded by insisting “But the Taliban movement is tied to al Qaeda…so by not attacking the targets recommended by Pakistan the US had revealed its support of the TTP. The CIA at one time had even worked with the group’s leader, Baitullah Mehsud,” Zardari asserted.
3) The News International, October 13, 2010

http://www.thenews.com.pk/13-10-2010/Top-Story/1276.htm

4) Washington Post, September 21, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/21/AR2009092100110.html

At the meeting between Obama, Zardari and Karzai in May of 2009, the American president slighted his two counterparts for alleged lack of resolve in prosecuting the war on both sides of the Durand Line, although even as he spoke Pakistan was engaged in a major military assault in the Swat Valley which led to the displacement of 3 million civilians.

Four days after the dinner exchange between Zardari and Khalilzad, the Pakistani president appeared on the May 10 edition of NBC’s Meet the Press on a program which also included Afghan President Karzai and Steve Coll, now president and CEO of the New America Foundation and author of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004) and The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (2008).

Zardari’s comments to his American audience included the claim that the Taliban “was part of your past and our past, and the ISI and the CIA created them together. And I can find you 10 books and 10 philosophers and 10 write-ups on that….”
5) Meet the Press, May 10, 2009

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30658135

Arthur Herman, a visiting scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank, stated in an article entitled “Our Pakistan problem: Obama’s approach is failing” that “The bitter irony is that even as Obama is trying to get out of the war in Afghanistan, he may be heading us into one in Pakistan.”

The author detailed that whereas in 2009 the U.S. launched 45 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) attacks inside Pakistan, it had tripled that number by the time his article appeared, and that half as many as last year’s total strikes had been launched this September alone.

Also mentioning the NATO helicopter attack in the Kurram Agency of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas on September 30 which killed three members of the Frontier Corps and that “Raids by the CIA’s Counterterrorism Pursuit Team – with its 3,000 Afghan troops – into Pakistan are also becoming routine,” Herman warned:

“All this adds up to a US effort in Pakistan highly reminiscent of the one we undertook in Laos in the 1960s – one of the springboards into the Vietnam quagmire.

“If Obama’s growing pressure on Pakistan destabilizes that government, the only thing keeping that country’s nukes out of the hands of al Qaeda may have to be US troops. That’s a shooting-war scenario that will make Obama wish his name was Lyndon Baines Johnson.”
6) Arthur Herman, Our Pakistan problem: Obama’s approach is failing
New York Post, October 3, 2010 http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/our_pakistan_problem_1TqxfBu89mDxSlZHUtHj2K
Obama’s Pakistan Failure
American Enterprise Institute, October 3, 2010

http://www.aei.org/article/102612

A report of October 13 documented that since Petraeus took command of the war effort in Afghanistan in June there has been a 172 percent increase in U.S. and NATO air strikes, from 257 assault missions in September of 2009 to over 700 last month. In addition, “Surveillance flights increased to nearly three times the number from September 2009 and supply flights are up as well….Petraeus is sometimes seen as more willing to risk the so-called ‘collateral damage’ of civilian deaths…
7) ABC News Radio, October 13, 2010

Last month’s drone attacks were the most in any month since the targeted assasinations were started in 2004 and the amount of deaths they caused – over 150 – the highest monthly total to date.

By the middle of this month there have been at least eight drone attacks and no fewer than 66 people killed.

According to Steve Coll’s New America Foundation, 1,439 of the 1,844 deaths caused by drone attacks in Pakistan since 2004 have occurred in 2009 and so far this year
8) New America Foundation

http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones

An October 13 feature in The Nation stated that “the ongoing war on terror in Afghanistan is aimed to take the operations into Pakistani territory….The real target is Pakistan’s nuclear potential; they [the U.S. and NATO] have no plausible security threat from the ill-equipped Taliban or ragtag extremists.”

Commenting on the New York Post feature cited earlier, Pakistani commentator A R Jerral further claimed that what “Herman suggests in his write-up is in fact a policy direction to the US administration. He implies that the policy of sending drones and attacking militant hideouts in the Pakistan territory has not worked….[T]he thrust is Pakistan’s nukes. It is a tacit way to tell the policymakers in Washington to keep the pressure on our country, which will weaken the Pakistani government’s standing, causing instability. That will provide the reason for the US troops to move in.”

He added: “We know about the drone attacks as these are reported in the media, but what we do not know and our media does not report is the fact that US-led NATO forces are launching crossborder raids into Pakistan….For this, CIA is operating Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams in Afghanistan.

“These teams are regularly mounting ground raids into Pakistani territory.”

“In this way, things are getting hot as far as the war on terror is concerned. Pakistan is moving to become centre stage in this war. Bruce Riedel, a former CIA and NSC [National Security Council] official, has advised Mr Obama to shift the focus of war ‘from Afghanistan to Pakistan’; this is what we are witnessing in the shape of heightened war effort into the Pakistan territory.”
9) A R Jerral, Shifting war on terror to Pakistan
The Nation, October 13, 2010

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Columns/13-Oct-2010/Shifting-war-on-terror-to-Pakistan

“The free-wheeling access to US covert military and intelligence operatives, both officials and private contractors, is another destabilising factor that we seem to be unable or unwilling to check. And now there are the NATO incursions into our territory and targeting of even our military personnel, which shows how servile a state we are living in at present.
10) Shireen M Mazari, Ending Collaboration with the US on the War on
Pakistan
The Dawn, October 12, 2010

http://thedawn.com.pk/2010/10/12/ending-collaboration-with-the-us-on-the-war-on-pakistan

As the war in Afghanistan, the largest and longest in the world, proceeds with record casualties among civilians and combatants alike on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, plans are afoot to further expand the war into Pakistan and to threaten Iran as well.

Comparisons to Washington’s war in Indochina have been mentioned
11) NATO Expands Afghan War Into Pakistan
Stop NATO, September 28, 2010

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/nato-expands-afghan-war-into-pakistan

New War Rumors: U.S. Plans To Seize Pakistan’s Nuclear Arsenal
By Rick Rozoff