Pakistan: Seven Indicted for the Assassination of Benazir Bhutto

It’s been 3 years since Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. Today a Pakistani anti-terror court indicted two police officers and five alleged Taliban militants over the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, a prosecutor said.

“Seven accused including two police officers have been indicted,” public prosecutor Chaudhry Azhar told AFP, according to iolnews online. The police were arrested a year ago while the suspected militants have been in custody for nearly four years

No one has been convicted for Bhutto's assassination on December 27, 2007, in Rawalpindi, a garrison city near the capital of Islamabad, in a gun and suicide attack after she addressed an election rally.

“[All those indicted and accused] have denied the charges and demanded for trial,” Azhar said, adding that the police officers were accused of a security breach and for their “failure” to protect Bhutto.

The then president of Pakistan Perez Musharraf denied any charges that he was part of the assassination plot. It was thought that he was part of a plot to have her assassinated before the elections. He has denied this and remains in self exile in Dubai. Pakistan authorities believe he was negligent in providing her with adequate security.

Benazir Bhutto was born on June 21, 1953, in Karachi, SE Pakistan, the child of former premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. She inherited leadership of the PPP after a military coup overthrew her father's government and won election in 1988, becoming the first female prime minister of a Muslim nation. In 2007 she returned to Pakistan after an extended exile.

She was educated in the U.S. at Radcliff and Harvard where she finished her degree in comparative government. It was then onto the United Kingdom to study at Oxford from 1973 to 1977. There, she completed a course in International Law and Diplomacy. It was here in the U.S. where she developed her platform of social democracy that she wanted for her country.

She became the first ever female prime minister of a Muslim nation on December 1, 1988. Bhutto was defeated in the 1990 election, and found herself in court defending herself against several charges of misconduct while in office.

While in self-imposed exile in Britain and Dubai, she was convicted in 1999 of corruption and sentenced to three years in prison. She continued to direct her party from abroad, being re-affirmed as PPP leader in 2002.

Bhutto returned to Pakistan on October 18, 2007, after President Musharraf granted her amnesty on all corruption charges, opening the way for her return and a possible power-sharing agreement.