THE MASTERMINDS OF THE ASSASSINATION
Sarwar Khan struggled to breathe as he
opened his eyes in the suffocating darkness. Only a few hours earlier he
had been at his desk in Islamabad finishing up an ordinary day’s work.
Now the Ahmadi businessman was nailed inside a coffin, gasping for air.
His captors had injected him with sedatives and were attempting to
transport him out of the city in an ambulance, disguised as a corpse —
but the dose was wearing off, giving way to Sarwar’s blood-curdling
screams. As the kidnappers stopped to subdue their human freight, a taxi
driver on the highway witnessed the suspicious activity and called the
authorities.
The police action that followed that day in
February 2009 led to the capture of one of the most influential Al
Qaeda strategists and ideologues in the organisation’s history. Major
Haroon Ashiq was arrested from the outskirts of Peshawar while trying to
smuggle Sarwar Khan into the tribal areas. A former Special Services
Group (SSG) commando, Haroon had left the army after 2001 and joined
hands with the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) before graduating to the highest
ranks of Al Qaeda’s network in Pakistan. Major Haroon, it emerged, had
been a mastermind of the Mumbai attacks the previous year and also a key
player in some of the most spectacular militant operations in Pakistan
in living memory. These included a sustained campaign of attacks on Nato
supply lines, the murder of a former head of the elite SSG Major
General Faisal Alvi, as well the kidnapping of Karachi-based filmmaker
Satish Anand.
Haroon’s role in Al Qaeda was not merely
operational but also strategic and visionary. He was one of the only
Pakistanis to be elected a member of the organisation’s shura (council)
and is credited with reviving its flagging fortunes after 2003 in a
massive overhaul of the group’s organisational structure and tactics.
Kidnapping for ransom was also a new tactic developed under him to help
Al Qaeda out of a severe financial crunch.
Major Haroon
admitted his role in all these acts but one of the most important pieces
of information he gave to interrogators was about a case in which he
claimed not to have been involved at all: the assassination of Benazir
Bhutto.
The morning after the assassination 10 years ago, as the
country convulsed with grief and chaos, the government of Gen Musharraf
announced that secret agencies had intercepted a phone call to
Baitullah Mehsud, the amir of the outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan
(TTP), which indicated that the former prime minister had been
assassinated by Mehsud’s men.
The disclosure was met
with severe criticism and incredulity by an angry public. Doubts focused
on the speed at which the government had produced the intercept, only
fueling speculation about who killed her. News that the crime scene was
hosed down minutes after the attack led to accusations of official
complicity in the murder. The failure to conduct an autopsy compounded
the situation and reinforced suspicions. Over the course of 10 years,
these events have chronically overshadowed the case and ensured that the
investigation into Pakistan’s most controversial murder would always
remain limited in scope.
The most crucial piece of evidence linking Al Masri to the assassination was recovered from Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad after the raid. The document seen by *Eos, contains a memo delivered to Bin Laden just two days after the assassination.*
In August 2009, the Benazir murder investigation was
transferred from the Punjab Police to the Federal Investigation Agency
(FIA) on the wishes of President Asif Ali Zardari. The Punjab Police
inquiry under Additional IG CTD Chaudhry Abdul Majeed had been severely
criticised for its incompetence by the UN Inquiry Commission among
others. The new probe under DIG Khalid Qureshi of the FIA was able to
piece together a much more detailed picture of what happened at the
lower level of the plot.
According to investigators,
there were at least five tiers in the planning hierarchy of the
assassination. At the top of the pyramid were the masterminds, then came
the planners, followed by the facilitators, then the handlers and
lastly, the bombers themselves. In all, at least nine people are thought
to have been involved. Another three people are accused of having
knowledge of the plot. The perpetrators at each stage did not know the
conspirators higher up and were only in touch with the cell directly
above them. “You have to understand these people are the best in the
world,” says an FIA official who worked on the investigation. “Many of
them have been trained in clandestine operations and know the protocols.
There are natural ‘cut-outs’ built into the plan.”
According
to the official charge sheet, a key part of the attack was planned in
Madrassa Darul Uloom Haqqania in Akora Khattak by former students of the
seminary: Nadir alias Qari Ismail, Nasrullah alias Ahmed and Abdullah
alias Saddam. It is alleged that these facilitators were being run by a
senior planner Ibad-ur-Rehman alias Farooq Chattan who also provided the
suicide jackets. The Haqqania trio collected the suicide bombers, Bilal
and Ikramullah, from South Waziristan and brought them back to Akora
Khattak. Nasrullah then took the boys to Rawalpindi where they linked up
with the handlers, locally based cousins Hasnain Gul and Muhammad
Rafaqat, who were later arrested.
Copies of the sworn confessions of Hasnain and Rafaqat obtained by Eos
reveal details of how the two 15-year-old bombers were transported to
Liaquat Bagh and how the handlers conducted the reconnaissance of the
venue earlier the same day. Forensic analysis of call data records of
the accused, corroborated through mobile tower geofencing, confirm
Hasnain and Rafaqat’s accounts of their movements on 27th December.
‘The Long-necked one’: A Third Bomber?
According to the official investigation there were two
bombers present in Liaquat Bagh on 27th December. Bilal alias Saeed and
Ikramullah. These names are corroborated by the confessions of the
handlers Hasnain and Rafaqat. The bombers were placed at alternative
exits to ensure success in the event that Benazir took a different route
out of the venue. In the end, investigators maintain that only one
individual detonated his explosives and that this was Bilal alias Saeed.
The other would-be suicide bomber, Ikramullah, escaped from the scene
and has been declared a proclaimed offender.
DNA reports, however, appear to contradict the claim that
there was only one assailant. Personal effects of the bomber recovered
from the house of handler Hasnain Gul including a shawl, cap and pair of
joggers, were tested against the remains of three individuals found at
the crime scene. The DNA profiles of two individuals found on the shawl
and in the joggers match the remains of two individuals from the crime
scene. In effect, this means that another individual who came into
contact with the shawl and joggers found from Hasnain’s house, perished
in the blast. Eos has obtained exclusive access to DNA reports
that prove the existence of this possible third attacker. The report was
prepared by the FBI’s DNA laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, at the
request of the FIA-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT). Its findings were
originally included in an initial version of the challan submitted to
the court, but this was later dropped without explanation. This version
of the charge sheet states: “Comparison report of FBI Lab has
corroborated Hasnain Gul’s confessional statement by confirming that 02
terrorists who left shawl and pair of joggers and cap in Hasnain Gul’s
residence were killed in the blast on crime scene in Liaquat Bagh on
27-12-2007.”
Sources close to the investigation say the
report lost evidentiary value because representatives from the FBI
refused to come to Pakistan to testify before the court, rendering the
report inadmissible under Pakistani law of evidence. Another reason it
became untenable was because Pakistani investigators could not establish
a ‘chain of custody’ relating to the human remains which were first
collected by officials of another agency, who were later untraceable by
the FIA. “It is possible that the identity of Bilal and Saeed, has been
collapsed into one individual,” said one journalist who has followed the
case closely. Evidence for the existence of a third bomber comes from
two other sources. The phone call between Baitullah Mehsud and one
Maulvi sahib, intercepted by the security agency, contains a reference
to three bombers:
Baitullah Mehsud: Who were they?
Maulvi Sahib: There was Saeed, there was Bilal from Badar and Ikramullah.
BM: The three of them did it?
MS: Ikramullah and Bilal did it.
The
conversation makes a clear distinction between Bilal and Saeed.
Elsewhere, in a document prepared by the Interior Ministry, Saeed is
referred to as Abdullah alias Saeed ‘the long-necked one’. The document
claims that Abdullah alias Saeed, along with Bilal, Ikramullah and
Nasrullah was also part of a failed plan to kill Benazir Bhutto in Arbab
Niaz stadium in Peshawar on the 26th of December, a day before the
assassination. The assailants were not able to get close enough to Ms
Bhutto’s vehicle because of tight security and decided to move overnight
to Rawalpindi where they were picked up by local handlers Hasnain Gul
and Rafaqat. The account relating to an attempt in Peshawar the previous
day is corroborated by Hasnain Gul’s confession who says he was told by
Nasrullah that they had tried to launch but failed in Peshawar.
However, there is no mention of Abdullah alias Saeed in any of the
confessions in which the handlers admit to receiving only two bombers.
The ‘long-necked one’ appears to vanish from the face of the earth. Some
speculate that a third, hitherto unknown, terrorist cell could have
been used to transport the third bomber to Liaquat Bagh.
The
other men standing trial are Aitzaz Shah, Sher Zaman and Rasheed Ahmed
Turabi, all three accused of having knowledge of the conspiracy. Aitzaz
Shah, then a 15-year-old boy, was arrested from Dera Ismail Khan in
January 2008. Police say he admitted to knowing about the plot to kill
Benazir Bhutto and was prepared as a suicide bomber to target her if the
first plan failed. He also identified the voice of Baitullah Mehsud on
the phone call intercepted by the security services in which he (Mehsud)
is told of the successful operation by one Maulvi sahib. Though not
made part of the challan, intelligence sources believe that Maulvi sahib
is a man called Azizullah, also a prominent upper-tier planner. Another
individual, Maulvi Naseeb, a former teacher at Madrassa Haqqania, was
also involved in ‘preparing’ the boys ‘for jannah’ in Akora Khattak. His
role has also not been established in the challan. Both Azizullah and
Naseeb have been reported killed.
Eos has obtained exclusive access to DNA reports that prove the existence of this possible third attacker. The report was prepared by the FBI’s DNA laboratory in Quantico Virginia at the request of the FIA-led JIT. Its findings were originally included in an initial version of the challan submitted to the court, but this was later dropped without explanation.
“There are many things we will never know now,” said one
investigator involved in the prosecution. “The links are broken
forever.” He was referring to the fact that virtually every single
person of interest in the assassination conspiracy has been killed in
mysterious circumstances. Only the lowest level operatives have been
brought to trial.
Nasrullah and Qari Ismail were killed
at a check post in Mohmand agency, on the 15th of January, 2008, as they
tried to flee from police. They were transporting a 15-year-old suicide
bomber who blew himself up in the car. Qari was killed instantly and
Nasrullah died a few days later in hospital. Investigators say he
(Nasrullah) was a key figure in the conspiracy with Al Qaeda links who
knew the identities of people higher up in the chain. Analysis of call
data records from Nasrullah’s phone show he was constantly in touch with
a number that was used in the ransom negotiations of Karachi-based
businessmen Satish Anand and Aqeel Haji. Major Haroon Ashiq and his
close comrade Ilyas Kashmiri were involved in these kidnappings.
Ibad-ur-Rehman
alias Farooq Chattan, the alleged chief planner, was killed in a drone
strike in Khyber agency on 15th May, 2010. Officials says his case is
particularly confounding as he always remained a step ahead of police
despite solid intelligence about his location. It is also pointed out
that he was killed in the first-ever drone strike in Khyber Agency.
Abdullah
alias Saddam was killed while handling an explosive device on 31st May,
2008 at Mamad Gatt, Mohmand Agency and he was buried in his native
village Lakaro in Mohmand Agency.
Baitullah Mehsud was
killed in a drone strike on 5th August, 2009 in South Waziristan during a
conjugal visit with his second wife.
Baitullah’s Denial
Soon after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination Baitullah
Mehsud denied he had any role in it saying it was against Pakhtun
customs to kill a woman. His spokesman Maulvi Omar said: “We are sad
over Benazir Bhutto’s death. We do not have any enmity with Pakistani
leaders and are only opposed to the US.” Officials close to the
investigation are not convinced by the denial. “Baitullah only denied it
later after the backlash came,” says one investigator. “He had to
backtrack after the Sindhis started burning Mehsud trucks and tankers in
Sindh. 90% of the trucks are run by the Mehsuds. It’s a huge source of
revenue for him. He said we don’t kill women in our culture but that’s
obviously false. They have no such qualms. They have killed countless
women.”
Investigators have been able to piece together a fairly
comprehensive picture of the lower sections of the plot, and also
establish a prima facie case against Baitullah Mehsud. But the question
of who was behind him has always remained elusive.
Eos
has been able to obtain evidence that another hitherto unknown
mastermind was behind the plot. The story begins with Major Haroon’s
confession.
Haroon told his interrogators that the
assassination of Benazir Bhutto was ordered by Osama bin Laden and that
Baitullah Mehsud had been tasked to carry out the plan. Haroon claimed
the emissary between Bin Laden and Mehsud was a militant called Abu
Obaidah Al Masri who was in charge of Al Qaeda’s Pakistan operation.
Haroon
said he was given this information by Ilyas Kashmiri. Kashmiri, himself
a former SSG officer surged through jihadi ranks to become one of Bin
Laden’s closest lieutenants and was also tipped by US counterterrorism
experts to replace him as leader of Al Qaeda after the Abbottabad raid.
Kashmiri and Major Haroon were the principal architects of the Mumbai
attacks and worked closely together on a number of operations. Eos
has obtained a confidential FIA document containing details of Haroon’s
confession in which he confirms that the October 18th assassination
attempt on Benazir Bhutto was also masterminded by Abu Obaidah al Masri
and carried out through Baitullah’s men. The same network succeeded in
assassinating Bhutto two months later in Rawalpindi.
In
the document, Haroon also comments on the ‘superb’ planning and
execution of the attack from an operational point of view and says he
knew she would be vulnerable based on his assessment of her public
rallies. “Benazir Bhutto was daring and bold lady and he (Haroon) was
confident that she would definitely give chance to the assailants and
that what she did [sic],” reads the report. Major Haroon is currently
incarcerated in a special security block in Adiala Jail where he is
considered one of the prison’s most fearsome inmates.
These
revelations did not come as a surprise to officials close to the
investigation who had long suspected an Al Qaeda link in Benazir’s
murder, but were unable to establish it as part of the official
investigation because of lack of evidence. Investigators who eventually
brought the case against eight accused in the Benazir murder readily
admit they were unable to prosecute the masterminds of the
assassination, only nab the low level operatives.
“By
the time the investigation came to us the evidence was destroyed, links
broken,” says a senior member of the FIA-led JIT that worked on
Benazir’s murder case speaking on condition of anonymity. “But the
conspiracy began even before she set foot in Pakistan. The intelligence
chatter was loud and shattering. It was the Arabs in the northwest…the
Mirali/ Miranshah group who were entrenched there. The TTP was working
for them.” The investigator is convinced that there was a strong Al
Qaeda link. “I believe Beitullah did [it] at the behest of the Arabs.”
Al Qaeda’s 'Target Pakistan' operation
Al Qaeda’s dominant presence in the tribal areas post 9/11
and its role in reshaping centuries-old local dynamics there has been
well documented by local and western scholarship. In particular, its
ability to decapitate the vanguard of traditionally pro-establishment
tribal leaders in favor of a younger group of ruthless but malleable
anti-state warlords, such as Baitullah Mehsud, changed the region
forever.
Al Qaeda’s power came from its ability to
harness the potential and reach of local actors by introducing
sophisticated techniques and improving the capacity of militant groups
in Fata. From bomb-making and fundraising, to information operations and
guerilla tactics, the organisation’s foreign fighters turned the TTP
into one of the most deadly insurgent groups on earth. In 2005, Al Qaeda
was also able to convince the Taliban to accept the use of suicide
bombing as a strategic weapon, a massive game changer.
Despite
insistence from senior Al Qaeda ideologues such as Ayman Al Zawahiri,
Bin Laden was at first reluctant to attack Pakistan — partly to maintain
it as a sanctuary and recruiting ground, but mostly because he long
believed the real war was against the ‘far enemy’ which was to be routed
in the Afghan theatre.
A new book The Exile
(Bloomsbury), about Bin Laden’s years in hiding by award-winning
journalists Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy, argues that Ilyas
Kashmiri played an instrumental role in putting Pakistan in Al Qaeda’s
crosshairs. At a top leadership meeting, Kashmiri argued that in
addition to punishing its pro-western leaders, creating domestic chaos
in Pakistan would ensnare the Pakistani security agencies who would then
be less able to come after them. The argument was clinched after the
siege of the Al Qaeda-linked Red Mosque in Islamabad which was to prove a
watershed moment. The group’s decision to take the war to Pakistani
cities in 2007 was a turning point which ushered in an era of
unprecedented carnage.
Bin Laden needed an experienced
and dedicated head of operations in Pakistan to lead the new strategy.
He appointed an Egyptian called Sheikh Abdul Hameed as Ameer-e-Khuruj
[Leader of the Revolt] to direct the war inside Pakistan. Sheikh Abdul
Hameed is an alias for Abu Obaidah al Masri, the man mentioned in Major
Haroon’s confession as the planner of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.
Al
Masri was already the head of Al Qaeda’s external operations and
responsible for the London bombings as well as the near-successful
attempt to blow up 18 transatlantic airliners mid-flight. It was now
time to turn their guns on their host country. In the months that
followed, Al Qaeda was to shake Pakistan to its foundations.
The Menace of Al Masri
Despite a career in militancy spanning three decades,
relatively little is known about the man who would lead Al Qaeda’s
revolt in Pakistan. No photograph of Abu Obaidah exists, but disparate
pieces of information come together to form a clearer picture. Al Masri
was originally from the Sharqia governorate in the Nile Delta in Egypt,
but is thought to be a Sudanese citizen. Described as a ‘journeyman
fighter’ from the first generation of jihadis, he was a veteran of the
wars in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Chechnya. Al Masri was a
seasoned operator in Pakistan. According to intelligence sources, he was
a key planner in the bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad in
November 1995 which killed 17 people. His mentor Ayman Al Zawahiri
masterminded the attack. Benazir Bhutto was prime minister at the time
and said the attack was “retribution for the extradition of Ramzi
Yousef”, an Al Qaeda militant who had been handed over to the US. Twelve
years later, Al Masri would be back in Pakistan to kill Benazir Bhutto.
The Abbottabad Memo
The most crucial piece of evidence linking Al Masri to the
assassination was recovered from Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad
after the raid. The document seen by Eos contains a memo
delivered to Bin Laden just two days after the assassination. The memo
from Al Masri, delivered via courier, refers to the ‘special task’ and
informs Bin Laden of the successful “operation in ‘Pindi”, confirming it
was his men who murdered Benazir. “More good is to come in revenge for
our brothers and sisters in Hafsa and Lal mosques,” reads the memo.
Benazir was not directly involved in the Red Mosque siege, though she
was the only politician who had openly supported the operation against
it. In this context, however, the reference to the Red Mosque is a
wide-ranging pretext for all operations against the Pakistani state and
its leaders.
The courier goes onto discuss operational
issues and conveys Al Masri’s concern about a shortage of funds. The
message asks for Bin Laden’s permission to open a local branch in
Pakistan. This is most likely a request to offer the franchise to a
local group. The courier makes a supplication on behalf of Al Masri
saying he is: “already taking care of the two jobs and his productivity
would undoubtedly be higher should he be dedicated to one job only.”
Analysts who have looked at the memo believe this a reference to the
fact that Al Masri was simultaneously running Al Qaeda’s external
operations and the organisation was suffering from an increasing dearth
of leadership after the loss of a number of senior operatives.
The existence of this document was first revealed by investigative journalist Azaz Syed in his book The Secrets of Pakistan’s War on Al Qaeda.
According to Syed, the document was among the material that American
Navy Seals were not able to take with them from the compound and which
was later catalogued by Pakistani investigators. “The most striking
feature of this memo is the timing, delivered only two days after the
assassination,” says Syed. “The general impression about Osama in
Abbottabad is that he was completely isolated, but this proves he was
very much in touch with key figures of his network and getting updated
virtually in real time.”
An Arabic-language expert who
was shown the memo is of the view that it was written by someone who
knows Arabic but was not a native speaker. Syed believes this was most
likely Abu Ahmad Al Kuwaiti, Bin Laden’s trusted courier and one of the
few people who had access to him in the last days. Kuwaiti was actually a
Pakistani whose real name was Ibrahim Saeed. A speaker of Arabic and
Pashto, Saeed lived with Bin Laden for a number of years in the
Abbottabad compound and was his only link to the outside world. It was
Saeed’s phone calls that inadvertently led the US to Bin Laden’s lair,
where Saeed was also killed alongside his master.
Intelligence intercept
Bin Laden’s final years in Abbottabad, as revealed through
the memo and a treasure trove of similar evidence collected by the
Americans from the compound, reveal an astonishingly resilient picture
of the Al Qaeda leader. Despite his isolation, and periods of great
depression and scarcity, Bin Laden appears to have been deeply engaged
with his network, issuing directives, confirming appointments and also
monitoring developments in the region closely, particularly in Pakistan,
which was of special interest.
Yet more evidence
suggests he had monitored Al Qaeda’s assassination program most closely.
A secret security agency document leaked to Eos suggests that
he personally oversaw the assassination of Benazir and attempts on other
political leaders. The document dated 19th December, 2007, states that
the agency has ‘reliably learned’ that Osama bin Laden has issued orders
for the assassination of President Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto and
Maulana Fazlur Rehman. According to the information, Bin Laden planned
to send the explosives through a Pakistani national called Musa Tariq
who was en route to Dera Ismail Khan. Citing the intelligence, the
document also claims that “Osama bin Laden is personally supervising the
operation and for this purpose has moved to Afghanistan.”
Former Interior Minister Rehman Malik told Eos
that after his party took government, he looked more deeply into the
source of this information. “It came from an informant in Miranshah,” he
said. “There were reports that six people had been sent down from Fata
to carry out the attack. That corresponds to the information we were
subsequently able to gather about the bombers and their handlers.”
In
April 2008, US intelligence sources reported that Abu Obaidah Al Masri
was dead. A US official told the BBC that Masri had apparently “died
within the last two months, probably of hepatitis.” Assassinated
journalist and terrorism expert Saleem Shahzad wrote about Al Qaeda’s
disappointment at not being able to capitalise on the chaos in Pakistan
in the post-December 27 situation because of Al Masri’s demise.
Shahzad
had previously reported the only claim of responsibility in the Benazir
assassination when an Al Qaeda spokesman contacted him by phone. “We
terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat (the)
mujahideen,” he quoted Mustafa Abu Al Yazid as saying. Yazid, also known
as Sheikh Saeed al Masri was known as Al Qaeda’s chief paymaster since
the 1990s but rose to greater prominence in 2008, after the death of Abu
Obaidah al Masri. Yazid was also involved in the financing of the 9/11
attacks, though it is said he was initially against the plan. He was
killed in a drone attack in May 2010.
On August 31 this
year, an Anti Terrorism Court (ATC) in Rawalpindi announced a verdict in
the 10-year long Benazir Bhutto murder case. The judgement acquitted
the five TTP-linked suspects and handed down 17-year jail terms to two
police officers for criminal negligence in ordering the hosing down of
the crime scene and their failure to provide Ms Bhutto security. The ATC
also declared retired Gen Pervez Musharraf an absconder in the case.
The confessions of the five accused militants were declared inadmissible
by the judge on procedural bases. The police officers who are out on
bail have appealed against the verdict, whereas the prosecution has
appealed against the acquittal of the five accused militants. While the
appeals play out in court, there now seems little chance that this
judicial inquiry will advance the public’s knowledge about the larger
conspiracy to eliminate Benazir Bhutto.
OSAMA VS BENAZIR: A TIMELINE OF HATE
Osama bin Laden’s personal animosity for Benazir Bhutto
stretched back two decades before her assassination. He had previously
financed at least two operations to kill her and one serious attempt to
topple her government.
In 1989, for example, Osama is
alleged to have bankrolled an establishment-backed plot to bring a
no-confidence motion against her government which would effectively
remove her as prime minister. Operation Midnight Jackal was led by the
infamous spymaster Brigadier Imtiaz ‘The Cat’ Billa and other officers
who attempted to bribe parliamentarians to rig the vote. The plot was
foiled by sections of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) loyal to the PM and the officers arrested.
Benazir
Bhutto claimed Osama bin Laden had funnelled $10 million to the
conspirators which was used to purchase the votes. This account is
confirmed by former ISI agent and one-time close confidant of bin Laden,
Khalid Khawaja, who claimed that Nawaz Sharif promised Osama bin Laden
that he would impose shariah in the country if he helped finance the
plot.
Benazir reportedly called King Fahd of Saudi
Arabia after Osama’s involvement was confirmed and asked him to recall
‘his man’ otherwise he would be arrested and interrogated. The prime
minister reportedly delivered a veiled threat to the monarch, saying
that failure to do this would lead to uncomfortable speculation in
‘Pakistan’s free media’ about Saudi interference in Pakistan’s internal
affairs. An account of this phone call is contained in leading Al Qaeda
specialist Peter Bergen’s book The Osama I Knew: An Oral history of Al Qaeda’s Leader (Simon and Schuster) which also claims it was the reason Osama finally left Pakistan.
2007 wasn’t the only time that the Al Qaeda leader had attempted to silence the PPP leader
When he attempted to travel back, his passport was snatched by Saudi authorities and he was banned from travelling.
Four
years later in 1993, Osama bin Laden financed two plots to assassinate
Benazir Bhutto prior to the elections. Both attempts were masterminded
by Ramzi Yousef, the notorious terrorist and bomb-maker who was later
convicted of the first World Trade Centre bombing that took place
earlier the same year.
Yousef worked together with
militants of the sectarian Sipahe Sahaba to carry out the plan. The
first attempt was made in August 1993 when Yousef and another
accomplice, Abdul Hakim, planted a bomb in a sewage drain outside
Bilawal House in Karachi near which Benazir’s convoy would pass
regularly. According to FIA documents, the plan was interrupted after a
police mobile happened to pass by as the men were attempting to install
the bomb. Yousef told the suspicious officers he had lost his glasses in
the drain and was trying to retrieve them. The explanation got them off
but the men decided to abort the operation. Later, as Yousef tried to
recover the device it exploded and he sustained serious injuries to his
fingers and eyes. He reportedly spent 13 days in Jinnah Postgraduate
Medical Centre, Karachi where he was treated under a false name, Adam
Khan Baloch.
Investigators say another man linked to the
plot, a Sipahe Sahaba militant named Abdul Shakoor, who was arrested on
a separate charge, divulged details of the Al Qaeda sponsored plan and
also revealed that a man called Munir Ibrahim was the paymaster on
behalf of Osama bin Laden.
Taking another shot at the
contract, Ramzi and his accomplices tried to assassinate Benazir Bhutto
once more in a gun attack at an election rally in Nishtar Park, Karachi.
A rooftop near Nishtar park was selected as the sniper’s nest.
According to official documents, Ramzi’s uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad,
Osama’s deputy and mastermind of 9/11 furnished the weapons for the
attack, while the shooter, an ex army man was provided by Sipah Sahaba.
The plan failed when the sniper couldn’t reach Karachi in time from
Sukkur. Ramzi Yousef is now serving a life sentence in a US prison.
In
1995, Benazir’s second government faced a serious coup attempt by a
group of serving military officers working closely with jihadi
militants. The conspirators planned to assassinate the prime minister
and the army top brass before imposing shariah law in the country. Qari
Saifullah, a militant with close links to Osama bin Laden, was the one
of the main executors of the plan. He was imprisoned for a few years
before being set free.
Saifullah was head of the Harkut
ul Jihad Islami which was closely allied to Al Qaeda and received direct
financial assistance from bin Laden. He was named by Benazir Bhutto
herself in a posthumously published book as being one of the people
plotting her assassination in 2007. He was arrested in connection with
this but released in a matter of weeks after the police failed to find
any evidence against him. According to the New York Times, Saifullah met
with Osama bin Laden in South Waziristan as late as 2009 to discuss
operations in Pakistan.
THE SLAYING OF CHAUDHRY ZULFIKAR
Dynamic and headstrong, Chaudhry Zulfikar, the FIA’s
lead prosecutor in the Benazir Bhutto case, carried an unrelenting
reputation of pursuing some of the most dangerous cases in the country.
For this fact alone, he was looked on with a mixture of admiration and
weary amazement. Among the high profile cases he was pursuing was the
Mumbai attack probe in which he had brought evidence against seven
members of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
Zulfikar also brought murder charges against General
Pervez Musharraf in the Benazir Bhutto assassination case, the first
time a former military dictator had been made to appear before a judge
in the country’s history. The unprecedented move, it was said, angered
many in the military establishment who would not countenance the
humiliation of a former army chief.
The inside story of the assassination of the lead prosecutor in the Benazir Bhutto murder case, and what it tells us about who killed her
“He faced danger from so many fronts,” a fellow prosecutor and friend of Zukfikar’s told Eos. “But he was a remarkable man, a remarkable lawyer. He fought every case like his life depended on it.”
The
death threats had started to increase in the final days, but Zulfikar
trudged boldly on. His murder might have remained completely unresolved,
if it weren’t for one fortuitous stroke of luck that helped
investigators achieve a breakthrough.
Zulfikar was
killed as he made his way to court on the morning of May 3, 2013, to
appear in hearing of the Benazir murder case. He was driving himself and
was escorted by an armed guard sitting on the passenger seat. As he
prepared to take make a turn, the assassins drove alongside the car and
sprayed it with a hail of bullets. They pumped 10 bullets into
Zulfikar’s chest and also injured the guard who was shot in the back.
Zulfikar then lost control of the car which careened up an adjacent
green belt and ran over a female bystander before smashing into a tree.
The woman, who had just dropped her child off at school, died instantly.
Job done, the assassins prepared to flee the scene.
As
Chaudhry Zulfikar lay dying at the steering wheel, the security guard
Farman Ali managed to return fire with an AK-47. Amazingly, he managed
to hit two of the fleeing assassins, killing one and gravely injuring
the other. A third assassin trailing in a car behind was able to collect
the body of his accomplice and the other injured gunmen and escape.
The
search for the killers began literally with the trail of blood they
left behind them. This sole clue turned out to be the most important one
for police. They knew the injured suspect would need immediate medical
attention otherwise he wouldn’t survive. Investigators looked at every
hospital within a 50-mile radius and few weeks later they found a man
matching the suspect’s description in a hospital in Rawalpindi. The boy
had been shot in the spine and was completely paralysed from the waist
down. He was being attended to by his father who told them his boy had
been shot by bandits, but the police knew they had their man. Blood
samples from the crime scene matched the patients.
The
boy’s name was Abdullah Umar Abbasi. An Al Qaeda militant, he had been
involved in a string of major terrorist operations including a deadly
attack on the Parade Lane mosque in 2009 that killed 39 people including
Major General Bilal Omer. Abdullah did not fit the profile of an
average militant. He came from a Punjabi, middle-class background, with
roots in the Pakistan Army.
But the family had a dark
history. Abdullah’s father who stood by his bedside was a former colonel
who had been imprisoned and court martialled 10 years earlier over
helping to hide the mastermind of 9-11, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. Police
officials say Abdullah’s path to violence was unique and that he was
driven more by vengeance than religious ideology. Evidently Abdullah,
only 12 years old at the time of his father’s court martial, had been
radicalised after witnessing the humiliating treatment his father
received at the hands of the Pakistani military after his Al Qaeda links
were discovered.
From his hospital bed, Abdullah
admitted to the police that he was involved in the attack on Chaudhry
Zulfikar and gave them information about the rest of the plotters. The
second assassin was a man called Harris who had been shot and killed by
the security guard, but the third accomplice, who had put them both in
the car and driven them away from the scene, was named Tanveer.
Tanveer
then took Harris and Abdullah to a safe house in Bara Kahu, on the
outskirts of Islamabad. The house was owned by two brothers named Adnan
and Hammad. They buried Harris in the backyard of their house and
managed to get Abdullah to a hospital. Police were later able to arrest
the two brothers from the safe house and also recovered the decomposing
body of Harris from a shallow grave in the backyard.
The
brothers Adnan and Hammad, it turned out, had been facilitators of
several attacks including the assassination of Christian Minister for
Minorities Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti and a suicide attack on the Danish
embassy in Islamabad. Tanveer, the driver of the car, was a hardened Al
Qaeda militant who was wanted in multiple attacks across the country
including assassinating serving generals of the Pakistan army and
attacking Nato supply terminals and other targets. Crucially, he was
also involved in the attack on the Pakistan Air Force aeronautical
engineering complex in Kamra.
Eos has been able
to obtain documents that show that an accused individual in the Benazir
Bhutto murder case, one Rasheed Ahmed Turabi, also confessed to his
involvement in the Kamra attack, and was one of the men being prosecuted
by Chaudhry Zulfikar himself. Former Interior Minister Rehman Malik
told Eos he has seen information which suggests that the
missiles used to attack the Kamra air base were first requisitioned to
be used on Benazir’s convoy as she travelled between Wah and Taxila but
the plan fell apart. Though circumstantial, this evidence strongly
indicates that there was a link between the killers of Benazir Bhutto
and Chaudhry Zulfikar.
“I have no doubt the same people
who killed Benazir sent their men for Chaudhry Zulfikar” says one of his
FIA colleagues. “He would boldly stare down these men [the accused]
every day in court and never flinch. They wanted to send a message to
anyone who dared to bring a conviction in the case.”
A
few months later, Abdullah, who had lost the use of both his legs was
given bail on medical grounds. Soon after, he disappeared. Abdullah’s
father, Colonel (retd) Khalid Mehmood, informed the Anti-Terrorism Court
(ATC) that his son was picked up by the officials of an intelligence
agency. Later, the Islamabad police — responding to a petition filed by
Abdullah’s wife, Zainab Zaeem, for the recovery of her husband — told
the Islamabad High Court that he may be in the custody of the ISI.
When Eos
spoke to Chaudhry Zukfikar’s son, Nisar, who also worked as his
father’s legal apprentice, the slain officer’s son argued that his
father’s assassination is the reason that the all the TTP and Al
Qaeda-linked militants were acquitted in the Benazir Bhutto murder case.
“My father was adamant that the people who killed her
should be given an exemplary punishment,” he says. “He was certain he
would get a conviction.”
He says the climate of fear
that his father’s assassination created prevented witnesses from coming
forward and also sent a clear message to judges, warning against any
adverse verdict. He believes that police have not pursued his father’s
killers for the same reason.
Nisar’s frustration with
the slow progress of his father’s case and anger at the court’s decision
to grant Abdullah bail on medical grounds led him to clash with the
judge of the Anti Terrorism Court, Kausar Abbas Zaidi. Nisar approached
the high court in Islamabad to instruct the judge to expedite the case.
In the course of this, it is alleged that Nisar passed on documents to
journalists which attributed remarks to the judge which he said he never
made. He was charged with forgery and arrested on the orders of the ATC
judge who is also hearing his father’s murder case. Nisar is currently
incarcerated in Adiala jail, the same prison where his father’s alleged
killers are housed. He has said he will never stop struggling for
justice for his father.