Well this seems like a bit of a bombshell:
Retired Brigadier supervising Benazir’s security was Osama’s handler, says expert
No kidding. This from Yahoo News India.
More over the bump.
Here’s more:
Chennai, Oct.19 (ANI): The retired brigadier who was given the responsibility of securing former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s car journey through Karachi on Thursday, used to be the handling officer of Osama bin Laden and Taliban chief Mulla Omar when he was attached with the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Disclosing this information in an article for the rediff website, former Additional Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat, B.Raman says that Brigadier (retired) Ejaz Shah, whose resignation is being demanded by Benazir Bhutto, is a close confidante of President General Pervez Musharraf.
This article was written before she was assassinated, but after the first attempt. I just stumbled across it on another blog.
Supposedly she demanded his resignation after the first attempt.
But this illustrates the sheer impossibility (and some might say the stupidity (or blind optimism) on her part) of actually challenging the Powers That Be in Pakistan.
Unless she thought that somehow Condi Rice and the CIA could protect her … but hey, she wasn’t a stupid woman.
Anyway, I wanted to pass this along because I sure haven’t seen it anywhere in the American press, and I hope others can pass it around.
I find the whole Pakistan thing to be a big smelly black hole of mystery, at least regarding the United States relationship with it. Let’s be real: calling Pakistan an “ally” after 9/11 is just plain freaking unreal. Pakistan is and was guilty of everything they accused Saddam of: WMD’s, selling WMD’s on the black market, harboring terrorists including state-sponsored terrorism ….
And now, a month ago they start gearing up the Pakistan rhetoric by sending Bhutto over there with god-only-knows what kind of promises (“We’ve got your back, Benazir” says the U.S.), and having cover stories on it in Time Magazine and crap like that, then this massive turd hits the fan …
It’s all weird as hell.
Please pass this info around. This is the only place I will post it.
I sure hadn’t. Just curious. Thanks.
news to me.
as that was the previous attempt, was he also in chg today? there have been reports of the police leaving their posts before the fatal attack thursday.
this whole situation fails the smell test…in fact, it reeks to high heaven.
lTMF’sA
and no, I don’t know if he was in charge on the day she was killed.
It makes you wonder … what was she thinking? Or what had she been promised? She must have known she was in serious mortal danger, yet there she was, in front of crowds, sticking her head out of sunroofs, etc.
The whole thing is just … so odd and awful.
I can’t help but think she was completely set up. But that’s speculation.
Retired Brigadier Ejaz Shah, according to Raman, also played an active role in the campaign to discredit Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Caudhury after he started calling for the files of a large number of missing persons who were taken into custody by the police and the intelligence agencies.
[Emergency] The NAB Diaries – Part One and Part Two
By Amer Nazir – December 14, 2007 – For the non-Pakistanis, NAB is the acronym for The National Accountability Bureau. The flag ship of Musharraf. The main reason he gave for assuming power. He said that the nation had become too corrupt. NAB is composed of serving and retired army officers with unlimited powers. They are answerable to none. Present in every major city, each NAB office has a jail within its compound where prisoners are kept without any possibilities of bail. Some of them picked up from the streets, most from their beds at dawn. Several have died during interrogations …
Wednesday, 24 October 2007 KARACHI: Chairperson Pakistan Peoples Party Benazir Bhutto, in a letter addressed to the president, has written about attack on her life, sources said. In the letter she has pointed at the Chief Miniser of Punjab Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, DG IB Ejaz Shah, former director National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Waseem Afzal and former ISI chief Gen. (Rtd) Hameed Gul as conspirators. The PPP chairperson while expressing her reservations in the letter wrote that her life was in danger from Pervaiz Elahi, Brig. (Rtd) Ejaz Shah and Gen. Hameed Gul.
http://www.pakistanchronicle.com/content/view/4861/41/
Cooperative Research: Profile Benazir Bhutto
≈ Cross-posted from my diary — After Bhutto, A Nation in Crisis ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
Under the dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s the ISI really flowered as a kind of `state within a state’. It played a key role in manipulating the domestic political process to the disadvantage of Zia’s main political opponents: the Bhutto family and the Pakistani People’s Party. The ISI forged a close alliance with the US Central Intelligence Agency, whether in dealing with domestic leftists or – particularly – the Russians in Afghanistan. The main goal was to arm the Afghan resistance and bid up the cost of Russian intervention. It was an odd combination of Pakistani barracks nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism and US imperial might. Authoritarianism was the glue that held this disparate group together and the ISI was its main instrument. Although not without its tensions, this alliance held until the attacks of 11 September 2001, when it fell spectacularly apart.
…
Afghan resistance
The 1983 suggestion of American Ambassador to Pakistan Ronald Spiers, that the U.S. provide Stingers to the mujahidin accordingly went nowhere for several years. Much of the resistance to the supply of Stinger missiles was generated internally from the CIA station chief’s desire (prior to the accession of Milt Bearden to the post) to keep the covert assistance program small and inconspicuous. Instead, the millions appropriated went to purchase Chinese, Warsaw Pact, and Israeli weaponry. Only in March 1985, did Reagan’s national security team formally decide to switch their strategy from mere harassment of Soviet forces in Afghanistan to driving the Red Army completely out of the country. After vigorous internal debate, Reagan’s military and national security advisors agreed to provide the mujahidin with the Stinger anti-aircraft missile.
Former ISI chief Hamid Gul
● Nuclear Spy AQ Khan – CIA/America Refused Arrest in 1975 & 1985 ◊ by Oui
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."