‘If assassination is the price I pay ...’

‘If assassination is the price I must pay ...’

24 October 2007

An eyewitness report of the bombing of Benazir Bhutto’s bus

It felt very exposed on the open top with crowds all around, jamming the street and hanging from trees, lampposts and rooftops. We travelled incredibly slowly, slower than walking pace. By the time we reached Star Gate, just two kilometres away, and turned into the main road, we had been going three hours and darkness was already falling.

Either side of the bus were four pick-ups of bored-looking armed police. But the main protection was the ‘human shield’, hundreds of young men who formed a cordon round the bus to keep back the crowds. These were the jaanisar-e-Benazir, the ‘martyrs for Benazir’, a group of 5,000 who had volunteered to lay down their lives to protect their leader.

‘How on earth can you ensure security?’ I asked Captain Imtiaz, one of two police officers on board. ‘It’s in God’s hands’, he shrugged, looking heavenwards.

Bhutto’s own security adviser, Rehman Malik, was becoming increasingly concerned. The jammer they had requested from the government to block remote-control explosive devices within 200 metres was not working.

The main threats they were worried about were shooting, someone throwing on a remote-control toy-plane packed with explosives, and suicide bombs. The only protection for the last was the human shield, the smiling young boys who kept waving up at us. I moved to the front where Benazir was still standing waving in between checking her BlackBerry. She told me she was worried. ‘Look, the streetlights are going off as we pass under,’ she pointed out. ‘Someone is doing this.’

Because the bus was lit up I had not noticed, but she was right. Without the lights, it was impossible for her security to scan the crowds for anything suspicious. Later she told me she had been scanning the crowds herself.