Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto has said that the three names she sent to President General Pervez Musharraf of people with powerful positions in government who she accused of plotting against her included a close friend of the president.Asked in an interview on NBC Today whether it was not risky to name a close friend of the president as being someone who’s plotting against her, Ms Bhutto said: “Well, at that time I did not know whether there would be an assassination attempt that I would survive. And I wanted to leave on record the suspects. I also didn’t know that he was a friend of General Musharraf. But I asked myself that even if I knew that he was a friend and I thought of him as a suspect, would I have not written? No, I would have written.”
Warning came from Muslim country: Ms Bhutto said a Muslim country friendly to Pakistan gave information to the government and to General Musharraf which he shared with her about suicide bombers plotting an assassination attempt. She said that she knew an assassination attempt would be made against her and that people would be at risk. “General Musharraf had asked me to delay my return to Pakistan. And he had very kindly shared with me information that he had received about four possible suicide squads being sent to kill me. But I felt that if I did not return then they would threaten me the next time and the next time. And that the objective was to stop the transition to democracy, not just my return on October 18. So, we took a lot of security precautions. And we were confident about the caution as much as a person can be.”
Asked whether she regretted coming back now seeing what had happened, Ms Bhutto replied in the negative. “The people who came knew that there would be a risk. They put their lives on the line. And I put my life on the line. And we did it because we believe in a cause. We want to save Pakistan. And we think saving Pakistan comes by saving democracy,” she said.