SBS : Bhutto: threats won't stop me

Bhutto: threats won't stop me

AFP | October 24, 2007

Former Pakistan premier Benazir Bhutto says extremists are trying to derail the general elections after she received a death threat from a "friend of al-Qaeda".

Ms Bhutto also said she would continue to campaign for the key polls but would not hold large rallies in the wake of last week's deadly suicide blasts that tore through her homecoming parade and killed 139 people.

Ms Bhutto told reporters the threat, in a letter written in Urdu and received by her lawyer, threatened to "slaughter me like a goat".

"There are elements who want to kill us because they are petrified that the Pakistan People's Party will return and that democracy will return," Bhutto said referring to her party.

"They are trying to derail the democratic process because they know if the people are employed and educated the forces of extremism and terrorism will be weakened," she said at her home in Karachi.

It was not immediately clear if police were taking seriously the letter which claimed to be from the "head of the suicide bombers and a friend of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden".

Bhutto returned to Pakistan last Thursday to lead her party to the polls set for January, which are seen as a key step to restoring democracy after eight years of military rule by President Pervez Musharraf.

Mr Musharraf dropped corruption charges against Bhutto earlier this month clearing the way for her return home after eight years of self-imposed exile.

The amnesty was supposed to be a prelude to a power-sharing pact between the pair in the hope Bhutto's popularity could shore up Musharraf's grip on power ahead of the elections.

The suicide bombers struck her convoy in Karachi on Thursday just hours after she stepped foot on Pakistani soil for the first time since 1999.

Ms Bhutto has been surrounded by heavily armed guards on each of her rare public outings in Karachi since the blasts, amid her claims that the security forces and government have been infiltrated by Islamic militants.

She has also said she received a warning prior to her return about members of the al-Qaeda network, Pakistani and Afghan Taliban and a Karachi-based militant group who might have been planning to attack her.

Officials confirmed today that two suicide bombers made the devastating attacks which shattered her planned triumphant return.

Police last week found the head of one of the suspected bombers and released a sketch offering a five million rupee ($A94,920) reward for information leading to his identification.

Another badly damaged head was found later at the scene, and his face is being reconstructed with the help of forensic experts, a police official said.

Police had initially said a grenade was thrown by an unknown assailant before a lone suicide bomber detonated his explosives.

Meanwhile the officer heading the probe into the blasts is expected to be replaced after Bhutto said she had no confidence in him, officials said.

Ms Bhutto alleged during a news conference yesterday that the chief was involved in torturing her husband Asif Zardari while he was in police custody in 1999 under the government of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

"The provincial authorities are considering replacing (Manzoor) Mughal and handing over the investigation to some other senior police officer," a senior police official told AFP in Karachi, the capital of southern Sindh province.

Provincial home minister Wasim Akhtar also confirmed the change is being considered, although he did not say if it was in response to Ms Bhutto's claims.

Massive security preparations are meanwhile underway at her family mausoleum as villagers awaited her visit, officials said.

Ms Bhutto's travel plans have been under wraps since the blasts but she has said she plans to visit Larkana, her ancestral district north of Karachi.