Benazir Bhutto
Assassination: December 2007

On the morning of 27 December 2007, Bhutto met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. In the afternoon, she gave a speech at a PPP rally held in Rawalpindi 's Liaquat National Bagh. On leaving in a bulletproof vehicle, she opened the car's escape hatch and stood up to wave to the surrounding crowds. A man standing within two to three metres of the car fired three gunshots at her and detonated a suicide vest packed with ball bearings. Bhutto was fatally injured; reports differ as to whether she was hit by bullets or by shrapnel from the explosion. Twenty-two others also died. Bhutto was rushed to Rawalpindi General Hospital but was clinically dead on arrival and attempts at resuscitation were unsuccessful. No autopsy was conducted, and the body was swiftly transported to Chaklala Air Base. The following day, she was buried next to her father in the Bhutto family mausoleum, Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, her family graveyard near Larkana. Musharraf declared a three-day period of mourning, while PPP supporters rioted in various parts of Pakistan, leading to at least 50 deaths.

Authorities claimed that the assassin had been a teenage boy from South Waziristan. They claimed to have proof that the attack had been masterminded by Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban. The United States Central Intelligence Agency concurred that this was probable, although Mehsud denied the accusation. Mehsud nevertheless had a motive: he believed that Bhutto's pro-American and secularist agenda would undermine the Pakistani Taliban's control of South Waziristan and hinder the growth of Sunni Islamist radicalism. Al-Qaeda commander Mustafa Abu al-Yazid claimed responsibility for the assassination, declaring that "We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat mujahideen." The PPP accused the government of a cover-up, with several PPP figures claiming that Bhutto had been killed by a sniper linked to the intelligence agencies. Within Pakistan, there was also public speculation that the attack might have been masterminded by India or the United States. Musharraf agreed to invite Britain's Scotland Yard to investigate the assassination, although its eventual report proved inconclusive. Requests for the body to be exhumed for an autopsy were rejected by Zardari.

In Bhutto's political will, she had designated her son Bilawal, who was then 19, as her political heir as chair of the PPP. It also specified that her husband should serve as custodial chairman until Bilawal completed his formal education. Zardari became co-chair of the PPP. The academic Anna Suvorova specified that Bhutto's assassination created "a real family cult", one which was "fuelled by various apocrypha, rituals, and relics". In the wake of Bhutto's death, the election was postponed from January to February 2008, when it resulted in the formation of a coalition government bringing together the PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz). The new coalition put forth PPP member Yousuf Raza Gilani as prime minister. Musharraf, facing likely impeachment, resigned as president in August. He fled to London although, in February 2011, a Rawalpindi court issued a subpoena for him on the grounds that he had not acted on known threats to Bhutto and had provided insufficient security to protect her. In September 2008, Zardari was elected President of Pakistan by the country's electoral college; he remained in that position until 2013.

As president, Zardari called for a United Nations investigation into his wife's assassination. In 2009, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon established a three-person team to lead the investigation comprising the Chilean Heraldo Muñoz, Irish Peter FitzGerald, and Indonesian Marzuki Darusman. Although it was not in the commission's remit to identify a culprit, Muñoz later expressed the view that the assassination was likely carried out by the Pakistani Taliban, perhaps with the support of Mehsud, and that they may well have been assisted by rogue elements in the country's intelligence agencies. He also expressed the view that the original police investigation had been deliberately botched. In February 2012, the Pakistani official enquiry issued its final report, placing responsibility for the attack with 27 different militant groups. In May 2013, the state's main prosecutor in the Bhutto case, Zulfikar Ali, was himself assassinated in Islamabad. There was never a smoking gun in the Bhutto investigation. Many in Pakistan had reasons for wanting Bhutto dead; some saw her as corrupt, and her killing was considered advantageous to both the military establishment and to the Islamic fundamentalists who despised her.
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