There have been six plots to kill President Musharraf since March 2002, says a report in the latest edition of Pakistani magazine, the Herald.
Quoting army investigators, the report says there may also have been other “ill-planned attempts” by militant leaders who are now dead or in custody.
Some of the attempts were thwarted by tight security or because parades the president was to attend were cancelled.
Gen Musharraf survived twin attacks in December 2003 in which 17 people died.
The magazine says details of the investigations into the attempts on President Musharraf’s life were made available to it recently.
According to these investigations, the first attempt on the president’s life dates back to 2002, when a plan was hatched to attack the 23 March Pakistan Day parade with “kalashnikovs and grenades”.
The alleged plan to attack the Pakistan Day parade was abandoned when the parade was cancelled as it coincided with the Shia festival of Muharram, the report says.
The next mission is said to have been planned as a suicide attack on 6 December, 2002, when the president was supposed to offer Eid prayers at the Faisal mosque in Islamabad.
But the attackers failed to get close to the president because of strict security, investigators found.
Another attempt failed because jamming devices preventing an explosives-laden car from blowing up in Karachi as the president’s motorcade drove past it, the authorities said.
Jamming devices
Then there were the twin attacks near Islamabad in December 2003.
President Musharraf survived the first on 14 December thanks, apparently, to electronic jamming devices which blocked a signal to a remote-controlled bomb.
The blast destroyed a bridge minutes after his motorcade had passed over it. No one was hurt.
Eleven days later two suicide bombers tried to ram explosive-laden vehicles into the president’s limousine, killing 17 people.
Such a sustained campaign by the jihadis, says the report, demonstrates their resolve to eliminate President Musharraf.
Oh well even a cat only has 9 lives musharraff lives another day his time will come!
