Source: AFP

LONDON (AFP) — Former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in a suicide attack last year, was informed of four suicide bomber squads who were targeting her, extracts from her soon-to-be-released memoirs revealed Sunday.

According to Bhutto, who had been campaigning in Rawalpindi ahead of planned elections when she was killed on December 27, among the groups were one led by a son of Osama bin Laden, and another run by Islamist warlord Baitullah Mehsud, who authorities suspect masterminded her assassination.

In the excerpts published in The Sunday Times newspaper, she said she received the information from the government of President Pervez Musharraf, and an unidentified “sympathetic Muslim foreign government”, before her return to Pakistan in October after eight years in exile.

“I was told by both the Musharraf regime and the foreign Muslim government that four suicide bomber squads would attempt to kill me,” Bhutto wrote in her memoirs.

“These included, the reports said, squads sent by the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud; Hamza bin Laden, a son of Osama bin Laden; Red Mosque militants; and a Karachi-based militant group.”

Bhutto lamented the fact that despite a request, “we received no reports (from Musharraf’s government) on what actions were taken before my arrival as a follow-up to these warnings.”

She added: “He (Musharraf) said he was concerned about my security and my safety, but his supporters did very little to provide the necessary protection we needed … protection to which I was entitled as a former prime minister.”

Her October homecoming parade in the southern city of Karachi was targeted by a suicide bombing that killed 139 people.

Bhutto’s memoirs, “Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West”, will be published February 12.

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Tags: Assassination, Baitullah Mehsud, Benazir Bhutto, Elections, Suicide bombing