Pakistan’s former president and army chief Pervez Musharraf was today charged with the murder of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.
Mrs Bhutto, 54, who twice served as Pakistan’s prime minister, died in a gun and suicide bomb attack in December 2007 at an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi.
Mr Musharraf, 69, president at the time of her death, was charged with murder, criminal conspiracy to murder and facilitation of murder. He did not speak at the hearing, in the anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi, but denies the charges.
The case was adjourned for a week. Prosecutors have said the former military ruler, who has been under house arrest at his home near Islamabad since April 19 and was brought to court today amid tight security, failed to properly protect Mrs Bhutto.
The daughter of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto — himself executed in 1977 after being deposed in a coup — Mrs Bhutto was widely respected in Pakistan for her political commitment, economic drives, her condemnation of militancy and support for the poor. She led the centre-left Pakistan Peoples Party founded in 1967 by her father, and served as prime minister in the Eighties and Nineties.
However, both her governments were dismissed under the cloud of corruption allegations by presidents who were close to Pakistan’s powerful army.
She survived an attempted coup during her second term in 1995 and in 1999 went into self-imposed exile in Dubai and London for eight years following corruption allegations against her and her husband, senator Asif Ali Zardari.
She returned to Pakistan two months before her death, after Mr Musharraf, then president, granted her amnesty, allowing her to take part in national elections.
Her assassination set off a wave of protests across Pakistan, helping to propel the PPP to office and her husband to the presidency in 2008.
Mr Musharraf returned to Pakistan in March this year after nearly four years in self-imposed exile, vowing to take part in May elections, but he found little popular support and was disqualified by the courts for life from holding political office because of legal cases pending against him.
In addition to the Bhutto charges, the government is pursuing treason allegations against Mr Musharraf in relation to the 2007 detention of judges. He also faces accusations in connection with the death of a separatist leader in the southwestern province of Baluchistan. He denies any wrongdoing.
He has faced threats from the Taliban in Pakistan, who twice tried to assassinate him while he was in office and vowed to try again if he returned.
