Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto : Women of Power killed

      

Pakistan's opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on December 27, 2007 Thursday in a suicide attack that also killed at least 20 others at the end of a campaign rally, aides said. "The surgeons confirmed that she has been martyred," Bhutto's lawyer Babar Awan said.

A party security adviser said Bhutto was shot in neck and chest as she got into her vehicle to leave the rally in Rawalpindi near the capital Islamabad. A gunman then blew himself up."At 6:16 p.m. she expired," said Wasif Ali Khan, a member of Bhutto's party who was at Rawalpindi General Hospital where she was taken after the attack.Her supporters at the hospital began chanting "Dog, Musharraf, dog," referring to Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf.

Benazir Bhutto was a Pakistani politician. Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead a post-colonial Muslim state. She was twice elected Prime Minister of Pakistan. She was sworn in for the first time in 1988 but removed from office 20 months later under orders of then-President Ghulam Ishaq Khan on grounds of alleged corruption. In 1993 Bhutto was re-elected but was again removed in 1996 on similar charges, this time by President Farooq Leghari.

                                     

Bhutto went into self-imposed exile in Dubai in 1998, where she remained until she returned to Pakistan on October 18,2007 after reaching an understanding with General Musharraf by which she was granted amnesty and all corruption charges were withdrawn. 

                              

On the same day(18-10-2007), her homecoming parade in karachi was also targeted by a suicide attacker, killing more than 140 people. On that occasion she narrowly escaped injury.

 

Like the Nehru-Gandhi family in India, the Bhuttos of Pakistan are one of the world's most famous political dynasties. Benazir's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was prime minister of Pakistan in the early 1970s. On 18 December 1987 she married Asif Ali Zardari in Karachi. The couple had three children: Bilawal, Bakhtwar, and Aseefa. Benazir Bhutto was the last remaining bearer of her late father's political legacy.

 

Her brother, Murtaza - who was once expected to play the role of party leader - fled to the then-communist Afghanistan after his father's fall. He won elections from exile in 1993 and became a provincial legislator, returning home soon afterwards, only to be shot dead under mysterious circumstances in 1996

 

Benazir's other brother, Shahnawaz - also politically active but in less violent ways than Murtaza - was found dead in his French Riviera apartment in 1985

Bhutto thought that she experienced a lot of gender discrimination as the first Muslim woman Prime Minister. She felt that, many of the Muslim religious leaders believed she had taken a man's place. This criticism based on her gender was something she found very difficult to deal with.

 

Ms. Bhutto is the author of "Foreign Policy in Perspective" (1978) and her autobiography, "Daughter of Destiny" (1989). She received the Bruno Kreisky Award for Human Rights in 1988 and the Honorary Phi Beta Kappa Award from Radcliffe in 1989.She has been mentiond as "The world's most popular politician" in the New Guinness Book of Record 1996. The "Times " and the "Australian Magazine"(May 4, 1996) have drawn up a list of 100 most powerful women and have included Benazir bhutto as one of them.

Benazir Bhutto is a woman of courage and conviction and acknowledged with the International Leadership Award.

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