Benazir Bhutto: Advocator of Democracy and Martyr

They might try to kill me. I have prepared my family and loved ones for any outcome, said Bhutto before returning to Pakistan.

Assassinations were nothing new to the Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, that was killed at a pre-election rally. She also knew that every public appearance was a personal risk.

Only a few hours after she returned to Pakistan from her eight year exile, a suicide bomber killed 150 people at her welcoming in her home town Karachi. After the attack, Al-Qaeda made threats in response to her statements supporting the war on terror.

- They might try to kill me. I have prepared my family and loved ones for any outcome, said Bhutto in an interview for the Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat before returning to Pakistan.

Powerful family, the victims of constant attacks

Bhutto was born on June 21, 1953, in a rich family. Her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was a popular political leader. He founded the PPP (Pakistan Peoples Party), which was led by her. He was also the president of Pakistan, and later the premier from 1971 to 1977. She graduated at the prestige universities of Harvard and Oxford, where, as she said herself, realized that her birthplace Pakistan is not the centre of the world, and that most people have not even heard of it.

After she received her diploma in 1977, she returned to the country. Soon, the military removed her father from power, and executed him two years later. Benazir then takes leadership of the PPP. Violence was not unfamiliar to the family. Her two brothers died under suspicious circumstances, and she herself claims that Al-Qaeda’s killers tried to attack her. The leader of Pakistan’s army Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, who executed her father, imprisoned Bhutto and her mother Nusrat a number of times.

The voice of democracy in Pakistan

Bhutto was first elected as premier of Pakistan in 1988, and in doing so became the first female premier in the Muslim world. The world welcomed this as the arrival of democracy to Pakistan. However, Pakistan’s president at the time, Ghulam Ishaq Khan relived her of that duty in 1990 on corruption allegations. She returned to the position in 1993 when her predecessor Nawaz Sharif was forced to hand in his resignation because of an argument with the president. He was returned to the position in 1996.

Together with her husband, Bhutto was sentenced to five years in prison and an 8.6 million dollar fine, in 1999 for charges of receiving bribes from a Swiss company. The supreme court later overruled the verdict because of bias, but at the time she had already left on a voluntary exile, because she considered that she was not safe in her own country.

After dialogue, opposition to Musharraf

She lived in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates since 2004, where she cared for her children and mother that suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.

She joined the “Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy” in Pakistan with her rival Sharif in 2006. But the two leaders were split on the issue on how to related to president Pervez Musharraf. Benazir wanted to negotiate with him, whilst Sharif rejected to anything to do with him.

She returned to Pakistan this year after negotiations with Musharraf, who guaranteed her protection from court persecution for corruption. She then announced her candidature at the next parliamentary elections.

Bhutto was one of the best known world politicians. Western allies saw her cooperation with Musharraf as the best weapon in the war against terrorism. However, after Musharraf declared emergency rule in Pakistan, Bhutto angrily protested against it, and called upon the president to end it and hold free elections. She held large opposition rallies in the country until the fatal attack in Rawalpindi.

VIDEO/PHOTO: Pakistan`s Bhutto Killed in Attack

Read about the unrest in her hometown in the article:

Bhutto´s Supporters Take Anger To The Streets

Read about the reactions to her death and consequences for the country in the article:

VIDEO: New “Wave of Terror” for Pakistan