Pakistani Court Indicts Musharraf in 2007 Assassination of - TopicsExpress

Imran Khan

Pakistani Court Indicts Musharraf in 2007 Assassination of Bhutto By SALMAN MASOOD and DECLAN WALSH Published: August 20, 2013 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — In a sudden erosion of military privilege and impunity, a Pakistani court indicted the former ruler Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday in connection with the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto — the first time that such a senior general has faced criminal charges. The court filed three charges against Mr. Musharraf, 70, including murder and conspiracy to murder, said a prosecutor, Chaudhry Muhammed Azhar. He spoke after the court’s brief hearing in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. Reporters were excluded from the hearing. Mr. Musharraf, who had previously asserted that the case against him was politically motivated, pleaded not guilty, his lawyers said. Afterward, police commandos and paramilitary rangers escorted him back to his villa on the edge of the capital, Islamabad, where he has been under house arrest since April in connection with other cases stemming from his nine-year rule, from 1999 to 2008. The symbolism of a once untouchable general’s being called to account was potent in a country that has been led by the military for about half of its 66-year history. While the military remains deeply powerful, the prosecution of Mr. Musharraf signaled that even Pakistan’s top generals are sometimes subject to the rule of law — at least after they have retired. Mr. Musharraf did not speak to reporters as he left the hearing, surrounded by security guards. His spokesman, Reza Bokhari, later called the charges “false, fabricated and fictitious.” Mr. Musharraf’s indictment spurred skepticism among some Pakistanis, who saw it as a moment of political revenge and misleading clarity in a case still clouded by confusion, obfuscation and the mysterious deaths of potential witnesses and prosecutors over the years. Indeed, prosecutors have publicly disclosed little detail about how Mr. Musharraf might be linked to Ms. Bhutto’s death. The new charges are believed to rely heavily on a statement by Mark Siegel, a Washington lobbyist and a friend of Ms. Bhutto’s, who said that Mr. Musharraf made a threatening phone call to her before she returned to Pakistan in October 2007. Mr. Siegel said Ms. Bhutto had warned him in an e-mail that if she were killed, the blame should fall on four named people: a former director of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, Pakistan’s main spy agency; a military intelligence chief; a rival politician; and Mr. Musharraf, who was then president and army chief. Two months later, Ms. Bhutto was killed during a gun and bomb attack as she left a rally in Rawalpindi. Mr. Musharraf’s government quickly blamed Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban. The head of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, Michael V. Hayden, agreed with that assessment — and 18 months later, the C.I.A. killed Mr. Mehsud in a drone strike. The court action on Tuesday provided the most dramatic chapter yet in a steep fall from grace for Mr. Musharraf, a swaggering, whiskey-swilling general who seized power in 1999. He became a crucial ally of the United States and escaped several assassination attempts by Al Qaeda — all the while pursuing an ambiguous policy toward other jihadi groups, including the Afghan Taliban. Sweeping street protests, led by lawyers, forced Mr. Musharraf to step down in 2008, and he fled into exile in London and Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Against the advice of many aides, including senior generals, he returned to Pakistan from exile this year in the hope of contesting elections and resurrecting his dormant political career. But instead of receiving a hero’s welcome, Mr. Musharraf was mocked by political rivals, mostly ignored by the media and collared by the courts, which are controlled by his old rival, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry — the judge who led the protest movement that ousted Mr. Musharraf. The courts have revived charges against Mr. Musharraf in four cases. But the Bhutto prosecution and a potential treason prosecution are mostly like to strain relations among the country’s judicial, political and military leaders. The treason prosecution is supported by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose last stint in power ended in 1999 after he was ousted by Mr. Musharraf in a coup. But inside the military, the prospect of a former military chief’s facing a potential death penalty has caused simmering anger. The Bhutto case, meanwhile, has become embroiled in bitter contention and violent intrigue. Apart from Mr. Musharraf, six other people were also indicated at Tuesday’s court hearing, including two senior police officers who face accusations that they sanitized the Bhutto crime scene. A United Nations investigation, which published its findings in 2010, said that a senior unnamed army officer had ordered one of those police officers, a former Rawalpindi police chief, Saud Aziz, to hose down the scene in the hours after Ms. Bhutto’s assassination. The car in which Ms. Bhutto died was also cleaned out, destroying its evidential value. “The police deliberately botched the investigation into Bhutto’s assassination,” wrote Heraldo Muñoz, a Chilean diplomat who led the United Nations investigation, in an article published this week. As he awaits the next court hearing in the case, scheduled for Tuesday, Mr. Musharraf may draw some cold comfort from Mr. Muñoz’s writing. The diplomat’s coming book, “Getting Away with Murder,” concludes that, despite her e-mail to the contrary, Ms. Bhutto probably did not believe that Mr. Musharraf wanted to kill her — “only that some people around him did.” Salman Masood reported from Islamabad, and Declan Walsh from London.

Posted on: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 05:00:17 +0000

Pakistani Court Indicts Musharraf in 2007 Assassination of - TopicsExpress

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