AP News, February 3rd, 2008
In an autobiography being published after her assassination, Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto said she was warned that four suicide bomber squads would try to kill her, one led by Osama bin Laden's 16-year-old son.
The former Pakistan prime minister — who was killed in Rawalpindi in December while campaigning for elections — wrote that Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf and a "foreign Muslim government" had informed her these squads were planning her murder, according to excerpts of the book, which is to be published on Feb. 12.
"I was told by both the Musharraf regime and the foreign Muslim government that four suicide bomber squads would attempt to kill me," Bhutto said in the book, "Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy & the West."
"These included, the reports said, the 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," she said.
The excerpts, first reported by The Sunday Times of London, were confirmed by The Associated Press, which obtained an uncorrected proof of the book.
Pakistani intelligence services and the CIA both believe that Mehsud was the mastermind of the Dec. 27 gun and suicide bomb attack that killed Bhutto. A purported spokesman for Mehsud has denied the claim.
Even before Bhutto returned to Pakistan in October after nearly eight years in exile, she was warned suicide squads were targeting her. Bhutto had complained that her life remained in danger and that Musharraf's government was not giving her proper protection.
