London: Pakistani politician Gen. Pervez Musharraf, when he was president, allegedly warned Opposition leader Benazair Bhutto that she should be "nice" to him if she wanted protection, a former aide of the assassinated leader has claimed.
"He told her, 'I warned you not to come back until after the elections," and threatened her, "I'll only protect you if you're nice to me," Husain Haqqani, who is now Pakistan's ambassador in Washington, told the Sunday Times newspaper.
"Instead of stepping up her security, it was reduced," the report quoted him as saying. Bhutto was asked not to travel in vehicles with tinted windows.
She appealed to the American and British officials who had helped negotiate her return to Pakistan. "I called everyone" said Haqqani. "I even got the US ambassador in Pakistan, Anne Patterson, to visit her." It did not go well.
"Patterson wasn't nice to her," said Bhutto's cousin and confidant, Tariq Islam. "She harped on, 'You must not talk against Musharraf.' The Americans never trusted her."
The newspaper report says: "Benazir Bhutto was brought back to Pakistan from exile as part of an international deal. Then she was killed -- and all traces of evidence were immediately swept away."
"I was with her on the truck in Karachi on October 17, 2007, the first time they tried to kill her; two bombs killed 150 people, but she survived," the Sunday Times correspondent writes in the report. "Bhutto had no doubt who was behind it.
Bhutto sent an e-mail to Mark Siegel, a US Democrat strategist, who co-wrote her last book, on October 26: "Nothing will God-willing happen. Just wanted you to know if it does I will hold Musharraf responsible."
Bhutto was assassinated on December 27, 2007 as she left an election rally in Liaquat Park, Rawalpindi.
Back in Islamabad, the Musharraf government appeared to be in panic. Within an hour of the attack the scene had been washed down with high-pressure hoses, wiping out almost all the evidence, the report said.
Saud Aziz, then chief of Rawalpindi police, said he issued these orders after receiving a phone call from a close associate of Musharraf. The interior ministry said they were worried about "vultures picking up body parts".
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