Benazir rally attacker a free man

Akhtar,described as a “fugitive” leader of the Taliban-linked Harkat-ul-Jehad Islami group,has been freed by Punjab’s home department,The News daily quoted its sources in security agencies as saying.

He was under house arrest at an undisclosed location in Punjab since August and was freed in the first week of December,the report said.

The order for Akhtar’s release was issued ahead of Bhutto’s third death anniversary. In her posthumous book Reconciliation: Islam,Democracy and the West,Bhutto had narrated in detail the suicide attacks targeting her homecoming rally. She wrote: “I was informed of a meeting that had taken place in Lahore where the bomb blasts were planned. Three men belonging to a rival political faction were hired for half a million dollars. However,a bomb maker was needed. Enter Qari Saifullah Akhtar,a wanted terrorist who had tried to overthrow my second government.”

Akhtar was arrested on February 26,2008 by the regime of former President Pervez Musharraf for questioning in connection with Bhutto’s murder though “many in establishment circles believed that Qari Saifullah had actually been taken into protective custody by his spy masters,” the report said. Though Akhtar denied having any role in Bhutto’s murder,he told interrogators since his 2007 release,he had been in contact with former ISI chief Lt Gen (retired) Hamid Gul and two former army officers,Maj Gen Zaheerul Islam Abbasi and Brig Mustansar Billa,who had attempted to stage a coup to topple Bhutto’s government in 1995.