‘We have become orphans after her martyrdom’: Pakistan remembers former PM Benazir Bhutto 10 years after assassination
Former president and military ruler Pervez Musharraf is alleged to have been part of a broad conspiracy to have Bhutto, his political rival, killed before elections
Thousands of mourners visited the shrine of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto on Wednesday as the country marked 10 years since her assassination, with her killers yet to face justice.
An estimated 20,000 people gathered at the shrine in Garhi Khuda Baksh in the Bhutto family stronghold of Sindh province, television images showed.
They came to pay their respects to the charismatic politician, who was the first woman to lead a Muslim country and a darling of the West.
“I feel we have become orphans after her martyrdom,” mourner Allah Varayo, 45, said by telephone from the shrine. Others waved flags in the black, red and green of Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) as well as photographs of the slain leader.
“I could see more vigour among the people, who have come in larger numbers than the previous years,” said Ahsan Junejo, a resident of the Bhutto’s hometown Larkana near the shrine.
I feel we have become orphans after her martyrdom
Bhutto, a two-time prime minister, was contesting a third election when she was assassinated in a gun and suicide attack at a rally in Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007.