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The Assassination

Episode 4: The Karachi Files

The Assassination

BBC

Unknown

4.82.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2018

⏱️ 35 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Secret reports, an arrest and “hidden hands” – why the official investigation into the Karachi attack on Benazir Bhutto failed. Owen Bennett-Jones gives a deep dive on Pakistan’s deep state as the saga of Benazir’s death continues. Includes interviews with key anti-terror officers.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Back in the first episode, we began with Pakistan's elite party scene.

0:05.4

This time, it's an intimate dinner, a kind of last supper.

0:15.7

My wife and I and Benizdi Bhutto and her husband were together in their New York apartment,

0:21.3

almost the whole night because she had an early morning flight.

0:24.9

In autumn 2007, Benizdi Bhutto's years of frustrating, but nonetheless quite luxurious,

0:31.6

self-imposed exile were coming to an end.

0:34.9

We chatted, she joked about returning in the sense that she said,

0:39.6

do we really have to do it? You know, we all live relatively comfortably outside of Pakistan,

0:45.9

and then she's in a serious mood turned around and said, but I have to do it because it's my calling,

0:51.6

it's my duty.

0:54.5

That was the last time Benizdi's friend Hussein Hakan, he saw her, he's still in the US.

1:02.8

She went from here to Dubai and then she went Pakistan.

1:07.2

A lot of people have thought she really did have an idea that she might die.

1:13.0

I would say that she did know that she was in grave danger and she was a brave woman who was

1:20.0

prepared for that. From the BBC World Service, this is the assassination.

1:30.4

This could be very dangerous.

1:35.2

And then suddenly,

1:43.6

Episode 4, the Karachi files.

1:47.1

So Benizdi Abuto knew she was taking a great risk after that New York dinner.

1:52.4

Milletants had threatened to kill her, and as we heard last time, she believed that Pakistan's

1:58.7

ruler, General Pavez Mesharaf, would only protect her if it suited him.

2:04.1

She made no secret of her concerns. I flew back to Pakistan with her.

...

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