Re: BREAKING NEWS: Blasts near truck carrying Benazir. Almost 140 dead 500 injured!
A voice of reason from the unlikeliest sources. I'd given up hope with the family but it seems there is still a silver lining. I hope zardari & co dont go after her like they did against her father.
KARACHI: Benazir Bhutto bears the responsibility for the deaths of 139 people in an attack on her homecoming parade by exposing them to danger for the sake of her own "personal theatre", her estranged niece said.
Newspaper columnist and poet Fatima Bhutto, the granddaughter of late Pakistani premier Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto said while giving an interview to a French news agency that her aunt's return from exile would plunge the country further into turmoil.
"She insisted on this grand show, she bears a responsibility for these deaths and for these injuries," the 25-year-old said at her plush family home in Karachi two days after the bombings.
Fatima Bhutto is the daughter of former prime minister Benazir's late brother Murtaza, who was killed by police in Karachi in 1996 amid murky circumstances that led to the collapse of her second term in government.
In the latest Fatima Bhutto accused the opposition leader of protecting herself on her return to Pakistan with an armoured truck, while bussing in hundreds of thousands of supporters despite warnings of an attack.
"They died for this personal theatre of hers, they died for this personal show," she said.
Her Pakistan People's Party dismissed "senseless accusations" that the 54-year-old was responsible for the deaths, saying it was the government's job to protect its citizens.
"Those who have died, their families are proud of them. The attack was against Benazir Bhutto. All those including ourselves who went there took the risk knowingly," senior party leader Taj Haider said.
Speaking in a sitting room decked with oil paintings of her grandfather, father and other family members -- although not her aunt -- Fatima Bhutto also said her aunt was not the enemy of militancy that she claims to be.
"She talks about extremism and nobody else points out that the Taliban was created under her last government," Fatima Bhutto said.
"What this (amnesty) means for this country is very, very frightening," she said.
She said her newspaper column, which often focuses on political and rights issues, was itself a "political act."
*"But as for running for elections, just because I have this last name, I don't think I am entitled to it. I don't think it is a birthright," she said. *
"I can't rule anything out for the future, but I think there are a lot of other ways to be political and right now I am choosing this way."
Source: Jang/TheNews
Thanks for posting this.
An eye-opener and exactly what I have been thinking/saying ever since this tragedy happened. Can't really expect much from someone who was even implicated in the death of her brother (Murtaza Bhutto). What kind of a sister would do that?