Bhutto’s last day e-mails talk of a rigging plan

LAHORE: Hardly a few hours before being assassinated outside the Liaqat Bagh in Rawalpindi on December 27, Benazir Bhutto was trying to expose a suspected intelligence operation orchestrated by the Musharraf regime to engineer the 2008 general election results in favour of the PML-Q. The polls were then scheduled to be held on January 8 – eleven days later.

Information coming from Bhutto’s inner circles and based on her incoming and outgoing emails, shows that the day she was killed, she was in the process of collecting information from different quarters about a rigging cell established at a safe house in Islamabad which was tasked to change the election results in favour of the Musharraf-backed Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q) on the day of the election. Bhutto was informed by one of her closest confidants on December 25, 2007 in an e-mail sent on her e-mail address — sazdubai@emirates.net.ae – that the Musharraf regime has set up a rigging cell to engineer the 2008 elections, which is being supervised by Brig (retd) Ejaz Shah and Brig (retd) Riaz Chibb. However, circles close to the two retired khakis refute that any such rigging cell was ever set up.

Ms. Bhutto’s close circles say the day she was assassinated, she was scheduled to meet two senior American politicians during which she was to hand them over a classified report, compiled on the basis of information ascertained by her own contacts within the Pakistani security and intelligence services, alleging that the Musharraf regime was using some of the $10 billion (£5 billion) in US military aid that Islamabad had received since 2001 to rig the 2008 polls. Patrick Kennedy, a Democratic congressman, and Arlen Specter, a Republican member of the Senate sub-committee on foreign operations, were scheduled to have a meeting over dinner with Benazir Bhutto on December 27 during which they were to be provided this report. She wanted to initially share the report with trusted US politicians rather than the Bush administration, which was strongly backing General Musharraf at that time.

According to the information she had already collected before her assassination, the so-called Election Monitoring Cell was to cast stamped ballot papers in over 100 constituencies of Punjab and Sindh in favour of the PML-Q candidates. The information further said that the provincial headquarters of the ISI and IB would ensure that the ballot papers are polled in a smooth manner at the ghost polling stations in the district headquarters of Punjab and Sindh and counted in the final count before the official election result is handed over to successful candidates by the presiding officers. “All this is being done because of the fact that Musharraf simply can’t afford a hostile parliament as a result of the 2008 polls”, information passed on to Bhutto said.

In her reply which Bhutto sent to her close confidant from her blackberry the same day – December 25 – she wrote: “I was told that the ISI and the MI have been asked not to meddle in the elections. But I will double check”. In her second message to the same confidant a day later on December 27 at 1:12 pm — five hours before her assassination – Bhutto wrote: “I have found out that Brig Riaz Chibb has retired from ISI and is now in charge of nuclear surveillance and not of domestic. Therefore cld (could) u (you) ask ur (your) source for more specific details that could either help us prove Chibb is involved in domestic or help ur (your) source clear him from the radar screen. Since rigging is an all important issue, please give it full attention. Mbb, Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device”.

The confidant wrote back at 3:06pm the same day (on December 25): “I have re-checked the information with the same source which earlier said the ISI and the MI have been asked not to meddle. The source claims Brig Riazullah Khan Chhib retired from the ISI a few months ago but was re-employed, since he belongs to the arm of the Artillery and is considered close to Musharraf who too comes from the same wing of the army. The source says Chhib’s cover job is somewhere else but he is actually supervising a special election cell in Islamabad which is working in tandem with the chief of the Intelligence Bureau. Brigadiers Ejaz Hussain Shah and Riazullah Chhib are close friends because of their having served Punjab as the provincial heads of ISI and the Punjab Regional Director of the Anti Narcotics Force (ANF) respectively in the past. Both are considered loyalists of Shujaat Hussain”.

Benazir Bhutto wrote back the same day: “I need the address of the safe house [in Islamabad]as well as the phone numbers of the concerned. Pl (please) try and obtain ASAP (as soon as possible). Mbb, Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device”.

Subsequent information passed on to Bhutto on her email stated: “The rigging cell/safe house in question is located on Shahra-e-Dastoor, close to the Pakistan House Bus Stop in Sector G-5, Islamabad. It is a double storey building, without inscribing any address as is the case with most of the safe houses. The cell consists of some retired and serving military and intelligence officers, which will show its magic on the election-day. Let me further tell you that Musharraf had granted Sitara-e-Imtiaz military to Brig (Retd) Riaz Chhib on December 17, 2007 for his meritorious services in operational field. Before his retirement, Chhib was in charge of the ISI-led Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB) which used to deal with the internal security matters, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit and Baltistan”, read the mail sent to Bhutto hardly three hours before her assassination.

Bhutto could neither reply back to her confidant nor make public the rigging plans of the Musharraf regime due to her busy schedule as she was in a meeting with the visiting Afghan President Hamid Karzai when the message was sent, soon after which she had left for Liaqat Bagh to deliver her last public address. However, almost a year after Bhutto’s murder and despite the installation of a PPP-led government in Islamabad, the decision makers in the PPP government seem reluctant to pursue her murder case by initiating proceedings against any of the suspects, including General (retd) Musharraf who had been named as her would-be assassin by none other than Bhutto herself. President Zardari keeps insisting that only the United Nations can carry out a credible investigation of the murder, despite the fact that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has already stated that the United Nations would not conduct any investigation but would only formulate a fact-finding body to look into the case.

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