Daily Times

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) senior leader Rehman Malik Thursday demanded Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal to place the names of five acquitted in the Benazir Bhutto murder case on the Exit Control List (ECL).

In a letter written to the interior minister, Malik requested Ahsan Iqbal to immediately place the names of Abdul Rashid, Aitzaz Shah, Rafaqat Hussain, Husnain Gul and Sher Zaman on the ECL to prevent them from fleeing the country.

Expressing serious reservations over the recent release of the five accused earlier declared guilty of Benazir Bhutto assassination by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) of the Federal Investigation Agency, Malik said: “The PPP family feels that justice has not been dispensed in the matter.”

In the letter, Malik asked the interior minister to make a request to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani for extradition of Ikramullah – “the surviving suicide bomber” – and Abu Mansoor Asim Mufti Noor Wali, pleading that their interrogation would further expose the facts behind assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Malik said that the confessions of the recently released accused were substantiated with independent forensic evidence to prove their criminal act in the court of law, including the DNA of the joggers used by the alleged terrorist / suicide bomber, recovered from the house of the one of the accused persons.

He said that the recently published book Inqilab Mehsud South Waziristan: From British Raj To American Imperialism’ authored by Abu Mansoor Asim Mufti Noor Wali, who is a senior leader in the TTP group based in Afghanistan, had also corroborated and confirmed the facts of the investigation carried out by the JIT of FIA. “The book is a self-confession of the involvement of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Benazir Bhutto’s assassination,” said Malik, adding: “The five accused are members of the TTP, which is evident from the fact that during the peace dialogues between Pakistan government and Taliban in Murree, they were named in the list provided by TTP to be released and handed over to them.

He added, “The TTP would have never demanded their release had they not been TTP’s important members.”

He wrote that the trial court took nine years eight months and three days and despite irrefutable evidence it released the five accused and hardcore terrorists of TTP. “While the Taliban leadership has owned the responsibility for murdering Benazir Bhutto in the recently published book, the second suicide bomber Ikramullah is still alive and residing in the Paktia province of Afghanistan,” he said. An anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi had acquitted the five TTP suspects in the high-profile Benazir Bhutto murder case.

Published in Daily Times, May 18^th 2018.