ISLAMABAD: The security officer of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto has told an anti-terrorism court that the director general of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) in 2007 had advised her hours before her assassination not to attend the public meeting at Liaquat Bagh.

Recording his statement recently before the ATC in Rawalpindi, then senior superintendent of police, retired Major Imtiaz Hussain, said ISI director general Lt Gen Nadeem Taj and Maj Gen Ehsan met Ms Bhutto on the night between Dec 26 and 27, 2007, to discuss her security.

He said Lt Gen Taj and Maj Gen Ehsan tried to persuade Ms Bhutto not to address the Liaquat Bagh rally. “The former prime minister had told me that intelligence agencies, the ISI chief and Maj Gen Ehsan had informed her about the security threat to her life,” he said.

A retired army officer privy to the development told Dawn that the ISI chief’s meeting with Ms Bhutto lasted a couple of hours. The army had received information from different sources, including intercepts, that suicide bombers had entered Rawalpindi and they could kill Ms Bhutto before, during or after the public meeting and that the information was passed on to the late PPP leader, he added.

Maj Imtiaz, who is a prosecution witness in the Benazir murder case, was posted as security officer of the former prime minister on Oct 16, 2007. He said in his court statement that Ms Bhutto had directed him to travel with her, along with his weapon, and sit in the vehicle on the front seat alongside the driver.

He said that it was his responsibility to arrange back-up vehicles. A 10-member security team comprising, among others, Dr Zulfikar Mirza, Agha Siraj Durrani and retired Maj Gen Mehmood was travelling in the back-up vehicles, he added.

The witness said he was also present in the truck that was carrying the late leader and which came under a bomb attack at Karsaz in Karachi in 2007. More than 170 people died in that attack.

He said that Ms Bhutto left Zardari House for Liaquat Bagh at 1pm. “One Hafeezur Rehman was driving the vehicle and I was sitting on the front seat. Ms Bhutto, Amin Fahim and Naheed Khan were sitting behind me. Safdar Abbasi, Zakir, a personal servant of Ms Bhutto, and PPP worker Khalid Hussain Shahenshah were sitting behind them.”

Major Imtiaz said that after the rally Ms Bhutto left Liaquat Bagh and when they were on Liaquat Road she fell in the vehicle and her blood began oozing out. Then a blast took place.

“We raced towards a hospital on Murree Road and after covering half the distance Ms Bhutto was shifted to another vehicle in which Sherry Rehman was travelling.”

Naheed Khan informed them that Ms Bhutto had succumbed to her injury, he said.

Ms Khan and her husband former senator Safdar Abbasi told Dawn that the-then ISI director general had met Ms Bhutto. But Mr Abbasi said they were not aware that the ISI chief had warned the former prime minister about her security. “We learnt this after the assassination,” he said.

When contacted, PPP’s information secretary Qamar Zaman Kaira said he didn’t know if Ms Bhutto was advised against addressing the public rally by agencies.

“It is also not in my knowledge that BB had met the-then ISI chief hours before her death,” he added.

Published in Dawn, August 2nd, 2015

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