I’ll return to Pakistan when health allows to face Benazir murder trial: Musharraf
ISLAMABAD: Former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf has said that he would return to Pakistan after recovering from his illness to face court in former PM Benazir Bhutto’s murder case, Express News reported.
“There is no evidence of my involvement in the [Benazir murder] case other than [American journalist and lobbyist] Mark Siegel’s testimony,” he added. “The allegations against me are false, baseless and fabricated.”
On August 31, an anti-terrorism court (ATC) acquitted five accused for want of evidence in the Benazir assassination case while branding Musharraf a fugitive. The court also ordered confiscation of his property.
“My legal team is closely following the case and will respond on my and my family’s behalf,” the former military leader remarked on the confiscation of his property.
“I have nothing to do with Benazir’s murder. There’s nothing that I could have gained out of it. The allegations against me are politically motivated,” he maintained. ATC Judge Muhammad Asghar Khan found two police officers guilty of ‘mishandling the crime scene’, making them the only people to have been convicted over the assassination of Benazir in a gun and suicide attack in Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007.
Musharraf is alleged to have been part of a broad conspiracy to have his political rival killed before elections. On October 1, 2015, American journalist Mark Siegel had testified via video link from the Pakistan Embassy in Washington before an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi that Musharraf had made menacing telephone calls to Benazir ahead of her return to Pakistan in 2007.
Musharraf departs for Dubai after travel ban lifted
He told the court that Benazir had received a phone call from Musharraf in DC wherein he told her in a menacing tone to delay her return until after the elections and that her security in Pakistan depended on the relationship she maintained with the Musharraf government.
In March last year, Musharraf flew to Dubai for the treatment of his spinal cord pain after a three-year travel ban was lifted.
The retired general was banned from leaving the country in 2013 after he returned to Pakistan on an ill-fated mission to contest elections.
The then interior minister Chaudhry Nisar had said Musharraf was permitted to leave after lawyers assured that he would return to Pakistan after six weeks.
There is no evidence of my involvement in the [Benazir murder] case other than [American journalist and lobbyist] Mark Siegel’s testimony
HOUSTON: US President Donald Trump has flown to Houston on to meet with victims of Hurricane Harvey and see the effects of the recordsetting storm while he presses for a multi-billion-dollar aid package.
Trump, facing the first natural disaster of his administration, was joined by his wife, Melania, as he passed out food and hugged, kissed and played with children at Houston’s NRG Center, a 700,000-squarefoot (65,000 square metre) facility that is now the city’s largest emergency shelter.
Trump, who is making his second trip to the stricken state this week, asked Congress late on Friday for an initial $7.85 billion for hurricane recovery efforts. The request comes as Washington faces tough budget negotiations.
Trump told reporters at the centre that his administration was moving fast to provide the financing for aid to the devastated region. “We are signing a lot of documents to get money,” he said.
Trump appeared relaxed as he posed for photographs with volunteers and chatted with those relocated to the shelter alongside Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
Melania, the sleeves of her blue denim shirt rolled up, hugged a woman and chatted with a child. “It has been a wonderful thing,” Mr Trump said of his meetings with the children as he helped serve food to evacuees amid shouts of “Thank you, sir.” Trump’s visit came after a week of historic flooding in the area.