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All About Benazir Bhuto 1953-2007

Benazir_bhutto_02 All About Benazir Bhuto 1953-2007
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University Days

After obtaining a degree at Harvard in the United States, Bhutto (right) completed a course in International Law and Diplomacy at Oxford in England 1977, around the time this photo was taken.


Benazir_bhutto_02bLegacy
Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (shaking hands with Indira Gandhi in this 1972 photo; Benazir is to his left), was also Prime Minister of Pakistan. In 1977, however, he was charged with conspiracy to murder a rival, then imprisoned and executed.


Benazir_bhutto_01 Powerful Figure
Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state. She was twice elected as Prime Minister of Pakistan.




Benazir_bhutto_03 Triumphant Return
In the wake of her father's execution, Bhutto took over the leadership of his party, the Pakistan Peoples Party. In 1988, she was permitted to return to Pakistan from England where she had been waiting in exile.


Who Is Benazir Bhuto?

Benazir Bhutto (IPA: [beːnɜziːr bʰʊʈʈoː]; June 21, 1953December 27, 2007) was a Pakistani politician who chaired the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) (Urdu: پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی), a centre-left political party in Pakistan affiliated to the Socialist International. Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state, having been twice elected Prime Minister of Pakistan. She was sworn in for the first time in 1988 at the age of 35, but was removed from office 20 months later under the order of then-president Ghulam Ishaq Khan on grounds of alleged corruption. In 1993 Bhutto was re-elected but was again removed in 1996 on similar charges, this time by President Farooq Leghari.

Bhutto went into self-imposed exile in Dubai in 1998, where she remained until she returned to Pakistan on 18 October 2007, after reaching an understanding with President Musharraf by which she was granted amnesty and all corruption charges were withdrawn.[1]

She was the eldest child of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a Pakistani of Sindhi descent, and Begum Nusrat Bhutto, a Pakistani of Iranian-Kurdish descent. Her paternal grandfather was Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, who came to Larkana Sindh before partition from his native town of Bhatto Kalan, which was situated in the Indian state of Haryana.

She was assassinated on 27 December 2007, in a combined suicide bomb attack and shooting during a political rally of the Pakistan Peoples Party in the Liaquat National Bagh in Rawalpindi.[2] Ex-government spokesman Tariq Azim Khan said that, although it appeared that she had been shot, it was unclear whether her wounds had been caused by a shooting or shrapnel from the bomb. Eyewitnesses to the assassination stated to various news agencies that Ms. Bhutto had stood up through the sunroof of the white Toyota Land Cruiser that ferried her to the rally[2] to wave at supporters who were cheering her. It is then that a "thin man" on a motorcycle, carrying an AK-47 rifle, fired two shots, one into Bhutto's neck, and she fell back into the vehicle.[3] After this, the assailant proceeded to detonate an explosive which resulted in the deaths of himself and at least 22 others, while many others were injured. Bhutto was rushed to Rawalpindi General Hospital where she died at 6:16 p.m. (Pakistan local time) (1316 UTC). The gunshot to the neck was reported as the cause of death, according to the Pakistani Interior Ministry.[3]

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