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Benazir Bhutto 1953 - 2007
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Ms Bhutto was the Prime Minister of Pakistan
from 1988 to 1990
and
again
from 1993 to 1996.
Let's try to wrap our little heads
around the historical significance of this fact:
This lady was the first female politician to lead a
Muslim country. |
Benazir Bhutto visited the Fourth World Conference on Women, which
was held September 4 to 15, 1995, at Beijing, China. There, Bhutto
delivered her
 Equality
and Partnership
speech on the first day of the conference.
Hilary Clinton followed up with a
speech of her own on the 5th, titled
Women's Rights
Are Human Rights.
And later,
Bella Abzug had the mic and
delivered her
Women
Will Not Stop speech.
Eventually, things got a little bit
too bumpy in the political arena and Bhutto fled to Dubai
where she should have stayed. But Ms Bhutto returned to Karachi,
Pakistan, where she was assassinated on December 27, 2007.
BENAZIR BHUTTO -
ASSASSINATION
An assassination attempt on
Bhutto was made on October 18, 2007, in Karachi, Pakistan. The
following details are quoted from the bible for bodyguards, Just
2 Seconds by Gavin de Becker.
Bhutto was riding in an armored bus
in a slow moving motorcade. A suicide bomber threw a hand
grenade, which exploded in front of her bus. Another suicide
bomber then detonated his larger bomb, which destroyed two
escorting police vans. There were also reports of gunfire.
The attack reportedly killed 140 and
wounded 500. Bhutto was not injured. She blamed the government
for turning off streetlights, making it more difficult for
security guards to spot potential attackers, and suggested that
officials did not act on information she passed on about planned
attacks.
On December 27, 2007, another assassination attempt in Rawalpindi,
Pakistan, was successful.
Bhutto had finished addressing a
rally of Pakistan People's Party (PPP) supporters and was
leaving the scene in her armored Toyota Land Cruiser when the
attack occurred.
Bhutto was standing through the
sunroof of the vehicle when an attacker fired three two shots at
her. Another attacker then detonated an explosive device next to
the vehicle, killing himself and 20 other people. At least 40
people were injured. Bhutto was declared dead at the Rawalpindi
General Hospital.
Initial reports indicated she had
been shot in the head. Then her death was blamed on her hitting
her head on a metal crank for the sunroof when she fell through
the opening. Pakistani intelligence officials blamed the attack
on al-Qaeda terrorists.
Disputes as to the cause of her
death and who was to blame still remain.
On November 5,
2011, a Pakistani court indicted five militants
and two police officers in Bhutto's
assassination. Justice Shahid Rafique charged
all seven men with criminal conspiracy and
murder.
The five militants
are Sher Zaman, Hasnain Gul, Rafaqat Hussain,
Abdul Rasheed and Aitzaz Shah. The two police
officers are Saud Aziz, who was the Rawalpindi
police chief at the time of the killing, and
Khurram Shahzad, another senior officer.
Here is the
NY Times article.
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