Please read the official statement from Apml to understands the facts..... Musharraf Indictment---Statement by the Office of Gen. Pervez Musharraf Dr. Raza Bokhari, International spokesperson and North American Point of Contact to General Musharraf issued the following statement to various media outlets: The politically motivated indictment filed against Former President Musharraf implicating him in the unfortunate assassination of Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is not only false, fabricated and fictitious, but is also an undignified attempt to smear the honor and integrity of the Former President on the world stage. No court of law that wishes to adhere to minimum internationally accepted norms of prosecution and due process would hand out an indictment solely based on allegations included in an email written by a paid lobbyist of Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto based in the United States. Benazir Bhutto’s Assassination In light of the farfetched and bogus attempts to implicate Mr. Musharraf in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, we have compiled brief answers to the commonly raised questions. This is to raise reader awareness and to equip our members to adequately tackle the questions. 1. Allegation: Benazir Bhutto was not provided with adequate security. Rebuttal: Benazir Bhutto was indeed provided with adequate security. Four police mobiles were provided to her comprising 30 personnel led by an officer she had hand-picked. Over 1,000 policemen had been deployed at Liaquat Bagh. There were about five walk-through gates and a bulletproof rostrum and policemen had been stationed on the roofs of nearby buildings. It was the responsibility of the PPPP’s leadership to have ensured that Benazir Bhutto did not expose herself to unnecessary risks. The suicide bomber was unable to enter the ground itself precisely due to the high security measures. Had Benazir Bhutto not come out of the escape hatch of the car so carelessly, almost certainly she would have been alive (like her colleagues in the car). 2. Allegation: Pervez Musharraf was responsible for the security of Benazir Bhutto. Rebuttal: Mr. Musharraf was the civilian President at the time and, as such, it was absolutely not his responsibility to provide security to anyone. Mian Soomro was the interim Prime Minister at the time The Chief of Army Staff was Pervez Kiyani The Prime Minister, not the President, controls the executive and the functioning Neither was Pervez Musharraf in control of the Punjab government As for the intelligence agencies, being held responsible, then they were under the control of Gen. Kiyani 3. Allegation: The evidence on the crime scene was immediately washed away. Rebuttal: First, the main crime scene was Benazir Bhutto’s bomb/bullet proof vehicle. Nothing therein was washed away. It is in the possession of Zardari and we ask why the authorities were not granted access to it. Second, as for the road where the blast occurred, are we to suppose that Pervez Musharraf rang a security official on the ground and personally ordered him to quickly hose down the area? A far more commonsensical scenario is as follows: the area where the suicide attack occurred is usually busy with traffic and the local authorities, on their own, decided to hose it down after they were reasonably certain that they had collected and secured the required evidence. This was not a unique occurrence. After virtually every suicide bombing in Pakistan – down to this very day – we witness the local authorities hosing down the affected area within a few hours. At most and at worse, this is a case of negligence by the local authorities. We should not read too much into it. Third, we also know that a number of PPPP members were covering their faces with the blood which was spilled on the road, becoming very emotional and violent. Fearing more people would become violent after seeing blood on the road (Benazir Bhutto’s blood was in the car, not on the road) and that it would be difficult to control the crowds, the local authorities decided, on their own, to hose down the area. Again, there was no grand conspiracy here. Fourth, Benazir Bhutto’s brother, Ghulam Murtaza Bhutto, was assassinated when the former was Prime Minister of Pakistan. Within hours after his killing in a police encounter, the area was hosed down. Using the same logic, does that mean that Asif Ali Zardari and Benazir Bhutto were somehow responsible for this murder and that they personally ordered the hosing down of the area? At the very least one is on much firmer ground here because Benazir Bhutto happened to be the Prime Minister at the time, with full control of the executive and the functioning of the State. Her police force killed Murtaza Bhutto. 4. Allegation: Why was an autopsy not carried out? Rebuttal: Benazir Bhutto was no ordinary person and disregarding the expressed wishes of her family would have led to more chaos and bloodshed in the streets of Pakistan. Let us not forget that her husband, Zardari (also the current President of Pakistan), had made it very clear, right from the start, that he and his family did not want an autopsy. Subsequent attempts to carry out a post mortem were also vigorously stopped by none other than Asif Ali Zardari, using the pretext that the family did not wish to see the body of Benazir Bhutto defiled. Consider the type of large-scale destruction Pakistan witnessed almost immediately after the assassination. PPPP activists initiated large-scale killings, nationwide burnings, looting and plunder (mostly in Sindh). Imagine the type of reaction her autopsy would have elicited had it been carried out by disregarding their wishes. However, note that a conspiracy theory implicating the government still has no basis because an autopsy cannot show that the government of the time was somehow “involved” in the alleged scheme to kill Benazir Bhutto. Thus, it would seem that the interim government had no ulterior motive in denying an autopsy. More importantly, Pervez Musharraf had stated clearly that if Zardari had given the permission, then an autopsy would have been conducted. The supporters of Benazir Bhutto are upset because no autopsy was carried out, but they would also have been upset if one had been conducted! 5. Allegation: Mark Siegel (friend and advisor/lobbyist of Benazir Bhutto) has said that he was with Benazir Bhutto on 25/09/2007 when she received a threatening phone call from Mr. Musharraf. Rebuttal: We only have Mr. Siegel’s allegation and nothing more to go by. Mr. Musharraf, on the other hand, has already replied to this allegation, stating that it is completely false. According to Mr. Musharraf, he spoke to Benazir Bhutto only twice: A. In person in Dubai; B. A phone conversation in October 2007 when Benazir Bhutto was in Pakistan. In this conversation, Mr. Musharraf shared intelligence information with Benazir Bhutto, which was conveyed to him by the leadership of UAE, indicating threats against the life of the latter. Knowing very well that Mr. Musharraf is an honourable and honest man, we will go along with his dismissal of Mr. Siegel’s allegation. Furthermore, even if true, it does not follow that Mr. Musharraf was somehow “involved” or “responsible” for Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Mr. Siegel – and all who wish to implicate Mr. Musharraf – is still not absolved from the requirement of presenting proof and evidence to back up their serious allegation. Important Facts Conveniently Ignored Zardari and members of the PPPP must answer a number of tough questions and explain some rather disturbing facts: 1. It was Benazir Bhutto’s team which mostly ignored and failed to implement a number of key security suggestions given to them by various officials from the US. For example, we are informed (emphasis added): “However, there was no indication that Bhutto’s team – including her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who attended at least one of the meetings – had followed through on the most critical of the recommendations, including the hiring of private guards and reducing her visibility in large crowds like the one in Rawalpindi where she was killed.“[NY Daily News National, The Associated Press, 31/12/2007.] 2. Why on earth did Rahman Malik and his entourage cease to follow Ms Bhutto’s vehicle and allow it to proceed alone? According to the much touted UN report on which the PPPP government spent a handsome amount, we read (emphasis added): Even though Mr Rehman Malik claimed that he was not an adviser on physical security, the letters he wrote to authorities, and his liaison role with security and intelligence agencies shows that he was deeply involved in the overall management of Ms Bhutto’s security. His departure from the scene at Rawalpindi after the attack allowed her damaged vehicle to become isolated. The rapid departure of the only back up vehicle, in which Mr Malik and other senior PPP leaders rode, was a serious security lapse. After moving a safe distance away from the scene of the attack, the occupants of the vehicle should have waited to see for themselves if Ms Bhutto’s vehicle was able to depart safely and if there was a need for a back up vehicle. As the back-up, their vehicle would have been a necessary part of the convoy whether Ms Bhutto’s vehicle was damaged or not. [Report of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry into the facts and circumstances of the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, p. 56 un.org/News/dh/infocus/Pakistan/UN_Bhutto_Report_15April2010.pdf] Should there not be any investigation and questioning of Rahman Malik over his troubling actions on this tragic day? 3. What happened to Benazir Bhutto’s cell phone? Who has it and who was she talking to immediately prior to carelessly popping her head out of the escape hatch? 4. Who killed Mr. Shahanshah and why was he behaving in such an odd manner on the stage in Liaqat bagh during Ms. Bhutto’s speech? 5. Benazir Bhutto’s brother, Ghulam Murtaza Bhutto, was assassinated when the former was the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Fatima Bhutto, the daughter of Murtaza Bhutto, continues to consistently blame Asif Ali Zardari for ordering the murder of her father through the police. Here one is on far firmer ground when holding the late Benazir Bhutto and her husband responsible because the former happened to be the Prime Minister at the time, with full control of the executive and the functioning of the State. Her police force killed Murtaza Bhutto. Why are the courts not willing to launch an investigation into this? Why can we not have a UN enquiry into this mystery? Does it make sense to spend millions on a UN investigation to look into the possibility of Zardari ordering the murder of his enemy brother in-law or does it make more sense to spend millions on a UN report to desperately blame Musharraf – the President at the time – for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto when we know he was not responsible for her security? 6. Benazir Bhutto had claimed that certain individuals were plotting to kill her. The four individuals she named were Pervaiz Elahi (former Chief Minister of Punjab and her main opponent), Arbab Ghulam Rahim (former Sindh Chief Miniter), Ijaz Shah (Intelligence Bureau chief) and Hameed Gul (former ISI chief and a staunch opponent of Musharraf). Mr. Elahi is today an ally of the ruling PPPP and the rest and freely conducting their political activities in Pakistan. You may visit the link below for UN report on the assassination. un.org/News/dh/infocus/Pakistan/UN_Bhutto_Report_15April201 0.pdf bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23763895 All the very best Manny Nazir Apml Global Group
Posted on: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 06:05:52 +0000
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