Video of Benazir's last few seconds

Video clearly showing Benazir getting shot by assassin before the bomb. Lays waste to government claims that she did not die of bullet wounds.


Channel 4 also has exclusive footage showing the point at which the shots were fired at the former premier. It can be seen here: http://www.channel4.com/player/v2/player.jsp?showId=10619#

Benazir takes four names in letter

It is being revealed that Benazir Bhutto has named former Punjab chief minister Pervaiz Elahi, former Sindh chief minister Arbab Ghulam Rahim, Intelligence Bureau chief Ijaz Shah and ex-ISI chief Hameed Gul as possible suspects in her assassination in a letter written before her death. This letter was written before her arrival in Karachi on October 18th and after the bomb blast, she told the media that she had told President General Retired Musharraf about a few names but did not disclose them.

The general assumptions amongst the intelligentsia of Pakistan stand to be spot on. Not a name more and not a name less. Did they have a hand in December 27th assassinations?

Our Darkest Hour

This is perhaps the darkest hour in our nation's sad history. The Concerned Citizens of Pakistan, mourn the loss of Benazir Bhutto - as we all do, regardless of agreement or disagreement with her politics - and send our deepest condolences to her family. At this time, we would do well to remember the words of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in his letter to Benazir from his death cell:

"Tin-pot dictators have ravaged Asia, Latin America and Africa... They are the worst tyrants of the post-colonial period. They have destroyed time-honoured institutions and treated their people like animals. They have caused internal divisions and external confusion. The dictator is the one animal who needs to be caged. He betrays his profession and his constitution. He betrays the people and destroys human values. He destroys culture. He binds the youth. He makes the structure collapse. He rules by fluke and freak. He is the scourge and the ogre. He is a leper. Anyone who touches him also becomes a leper. He is the upstart who is devoid of ideals and ideology. Not a single one of them has made a moment's contribution to history."

Following the tragic assassination of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, we have been plunged into a crisis whose proportions are difficult to exaggerate. Because of the divisive policies of one dictator and his refusal to back down, the country is on the verge of descending into complete chaos. To resolve the crisis and pull the country back from the brink of disaster, the Concerned Citizens of Pakistan demand the following:

1. Musharraf should step down immediately, and hand over power to a National Government, formed by the consensus of all major political parties and drawn from all Provinces of the country. The National Government should be headed by a neutral icon such as Justice (R) Wajihuddin Ahmed or Rana Bhagwandas.

2. The Judiciary be immediately reinstated as it stood on November 2, 2007.

3. Curbs imposed on the media be immediately removed.

4. A new and truly independent Election Commission be constituted.

5. Free and Fair Elections be conducted within 90 days, with complete freedom for international observers and independent exit polls.

In Mourning and Complete Solidarity,

Concerned Citizens of Pakistan (CCP)

The Flag's Complaint

Syed Ali Abbas Zaidi

In this poem, the flag of pakistan summons the common pakistani citizen and expresses its grief on the countrywide mourning of Benazir Bhutto Shaheed, moreover it levels some complaints and reminiscises old times!

17 crore people asleep and someone cried

wake up from apathy, Bhutto died!

Sea of tears, a nation mourns

drenched in grief, the flag adjourns!

' Thee cried with me, Thee felt my bliss

Thee shed thy blood, So that I exist!

From the chains of slavery, rose the man

the grace, the karma and the movement began!

with wisdom, faith and passion, beside my pole

with love so pure, the consummated goal!

The moment to thou, I was handed

My colors faded, My fate stranded;

between the people and the mighty tyrannts

but thee my beloved, remained silent!

My memory, though vague, still retains

the cries of those bloody stains!

and again, my heart is vexed with woe

burnt down streets, that gloomy show!

Now I am torn, My pole has rusted

But dont let me down, faith entrusted!

far from this dark, the fountains ply

fountains of hope, that never die!

brook of thy tears, go to the fountain

thy fears how foolish, thy lament vain!

What is this hope? wouldst thou rightly know?

Be aware, wake up and it will never cease to flow!

'In the best interest of nation' or personal lust of power

Rains of patriotism, or alcoholic showers ?

My countrymem, My sisters, My elderly peers

this is the time, to shatter all fears!

He calls it right, and right you deem?

what about Quaids vision, my Iqbal's dream!

for this is the moment, the time is high

stand up for the right, or i will die!

No man with stick , or khaki hide

Is above my land or its pride! '

Mobile phone pictures reveal Benazir was shot before the blast

(Courtesy Teeth Maestro - http://www.teeth.com.pk/blog/2007/12/29/mobile-pictures-benazir-was-defintely-shot-dead-before-the-blast/)

Considering all the commotion and fuss created by the government of Pakistan saying the called that Benazir Bhutto was not hit by the three bullets but instead she hit her head on some ‘lever’ of the sunroof. Last night I was contacted by a person via Orkut who had uploaded these images on his profile (now he has taken them off) he was offering to share his video to the extent that he gave his cell number in Islamabad, since his dial up did not permit transferring this heavy file.
On contacting him today he claimed that he was a PPP supporter and his party had instructed him not to share this with anyone. Later when a news reporter tried contacting him, his cell phone was switched off. I have two images to share with you which were initially taken off his Orkut Profile.

The first image clearly shows Benazir Bhutto standing upright in the car through the sunroof waving to the crowd.

The next image is just after the gun shots which were fired from the left but moments before the bomb blast. Here we see Benazir Bhutto not on the sunroof of the car most likely already shot and injured slumped inside

I sadly do not have the original video, though I tried very hard to get it. A source was in direct contact with the cameraman who actually shot the video and later uploaded the screen captures to show that he means serious business. He claimed to be in the security detail with Benazir Bhutto was riding on her car barely five minutes earlier but had to jump off as she exited the Liaquat Bagh venue. He was finding it difficult to upload the 56MB video file online so was ready to allow someone to help him get it readily available. Today morning he said that his cell phone was ringing off the hook with people clambering in the hunt for the video, hence forth he turned his cell phone off and had even removed the images from his Orkut profile.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari to head PPP

(Courtesy Geo News)
NAUDERO: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), the party of Pakistan's murdered opposition leader Benazir Bhutto named her 19-year-old son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari as its new leader Sunday and announced it would contest upcoming general elections.

Bilawal Bhutto, a student at Britain's Oxford University, was named party chairman at an emergency meeting, taking the reins of the party formerly led by his mother and grandfather, both of whom met violent deaths.

The party also appointed Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zardari as co-chairman, and called for a United Nations probe into the circumstances of her slaying in a gun and suicide bomb attack Thursday. "Democracy is the best revenge," Bilawal Bhutto Zardari told a chaotic news conference in the Bhutto family's ancestral home here, vowing the party's "long and historic struggle for democracy will continue with a new vigour."

Asif Zardari said the Pakistan People's Party would take part in the scheduled January 8 parliamentary elections, seen as a key step in Pakistan's transition to civilian democracy. "We will go to elections," he told reporters. The decisions came just three days after Bhutto's assassination at a rally stunned the nuclear-armed nation and left a void at the head of the PPP, the country's largest political party.

Taking part in the election has the potential to restore some much-needed stability after the street violence triggered by her slaying that has left at least 38 people dead. The PPP meeting in the Bhutto family's ancestral home in Naudero, deep in southern Pakistan, began amid emotional scenes as thousands of mourners beat their chests in grief and denounced President Pervez Musharraf. "

Bilawal is the new chairman of the party and Asif Ali Zardari will assist him as co-chairman," a party official said. It means the party leadership follows the bloodline for a third generation, some four decades after it was founded by Bilawal's grandfather Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a prime minister who was ousted and later hanged by the military.

Political commentator Najam Sethi said Zardari would "run the show to keep the place warm" for Bilawal, much like India's Sonia Gandhi for her son Rahul. PPP vice president Makhdoom Amin Fahim and its Punjab provincial president Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi will sit on a "advisory council" for their young leader, party officials said.

State's claims regarding assassination denied

Pakistan 's interior ministry said intelligence intercepts showed that al-Qaeda were behind the killing [AFP]

The commander of a pro-Taliban group in Pakistan has told news agencies by phone that Baitullah Mehsud, another pro-Taliban figure, denies any involvement in Benazir Bhutto's death.

Maulana Omar said on Saturday: "He [Mehsud] had no involvement in this attack. This is a conspiracy of the government, army and intelligence agencies."

A Pakistani official had said on Friday it had evidence that Mehsud was responsible for the death of Bhutto, a former prime minister. Javed Cheema, an interior ministry spokesman, said: "We have intelligence intercepts indicating that al-Qaeda leader Baitullah Mehsud is behind her assassination."

The claim was made as Bhutto was buried in her ancestral village in the province of Sindh against a backdrop of continued violence, with the death toll from disturbances rising to 31.

Cheema also said Bhutto died from injuries caused by hitting her head on her car's sunroof as she came under fire, rather than from bullet wounds or shrapnel.

Contradicting the official account, a close Bhutto aide told the media on Saturday that she saw a bullet wound in the head when she bathed Bhutto's body after her assassination. "I was actually part of the party which bathed her body before the funeral," said Sherry Rehman, who served as Bhutto's spokeswoman and who was in the motorcade at the time of the attack. "There was a bullet wound I saw that went in from the back of her head and came out the other side. "We could not even wash her properly because the wound was still seeping. She lost a huge amount of blood."

Rehman said: "The hospital was made to change its statement. They never gave a proper report. ... "This is ridiculous, dangerous nonsense because it is a cover-up of what actually happened." Earlier reports said Bhutto was gunned down by an assassin. The assassin then blew himself up in an attack that killed a total of 16 people at the end of an election campaign rally in Rawalpindi on Thursday. While pointing the finger at al-Qaeda, Cheema said Mehsud was also behind a suicide attack on a Bhutto rally in October that left 140 dead.

Pakistani authorities say Mehsud is based in the tribal region of South Waziristan.

Cheema's claim that Bhutto's death was not caused by bullet wounds but by head injuries was described as "a pack of lies" by an aide of the slain politician. Farooq Naik, a senior official in Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), said: "Two bullets hit her, one in the abdomen and one in the head. "It is an irreparable loss and they are turning it into a joke with such claims. The country is heading towards civil war."

Farhatullah Babar, a another PPP spokesman, said on Saturday: "The story that al-Qaeda or Baitullah Mehsud did it appears to us to be a planted story, an incorrect story, because they want to divert the attention." He said Bhutto had earlier told the government of "elements" other than al-Qaeda that she thought could be a threat to her, but officials never investigated. Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's Pakistan correspondent, said people were asking why the car in which Bhutto was travelling was not damaged by the fatal attack. "A lot of people in Pakistan believe there may be some kind of conspiracy behind the assassination," he said.

Questions have also been raised as to why the scene of the attack that killed Bhutto was hosed down by the authorities soon after the blast, a move that may have destroyed valuable evidence.