Fatima Bhutto charges ‘uncle’ Zardari, says my father’s killers leading nation

KARACHI - Former Pakistan President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s grand daughter, Fatima Bhutto, has charged ‘uncle’ President Asif Ali Zardari for orchestrating the murder of her father, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, saying the killers of her father are ‘ruling the country at present’.

Speaking during her book ‘Songs of Blood and Sword’ launch function, Fatima described in detail her father’s murder, which took place 14 years ago.

Without taking Zardari’s name, she said ‘the man, who orchestrated the crime of killing her father, is presently leading the nation.’

“The streetlights went off and roads leading to 70 Clifton were blocked by heavy contingents of police who were waiting to kill my father,” Fatima, a noted political commentator, said.

She said it was evident who killed her father, and added that those police officers who were arrested in connection with Murtaza Bhutto’s murder case were set free later and were even awarded national medals.

“Some of them are travelling to foreign countries as dignitaries,” The Nation quoted Fatima, as saying.

Fatima and her step-mother Ghinwa Bhutto have often hinted that they believe Benazir or her widower Asif Ali Zardari had a hand in the killing of her father Murtaza Bhutto.

Though Benazir made several warm references in her autobiography, ‘Daughter of the East’, to her niece, Fatima believes her aunt tried to split the Bhutto family.

Fatima, who already has two books to her credit, did her Master’s degree at London’s School of African and Oriental Studies. Instead of heading a debating society like her aunt at Oxford, she wrote her dissertation on the resistance movement to former president Ziaul Haq.

She published a book of poetry, ‘Whispers of the Desert’, at the age of 15, followed in 2006 by a collection of stories about the 2005 earthquake that killed 73,000 people in Pakistan. (ANI)