MUSHARRAF RETURNS TO PAKISTAN FROM EXILE

KHis scheduled Emirates flight from Dubai landed at around 12:45 local time (0745 GMT) after a journey that saw his official Facebook and Twitter accounts provide a run-

ARACHI: Pakistan’s former military ruler Pervez Musharraf flew home on Sunday, landing at Karachi airport after more than four years in exile, defying a Taliban death threat to contest historic general elections.

ning commentary, posting messages and photographs of him on board.

Musharraf scheduled Emirates flight took off from Dubai at around 10: 15 am ( 0615 GMT), said an Agence France-Presse journalist on board. “Long life to Musharraf,” sang supporters of the former ruler, annoying some regular passengers. The plane is due to land in Karachi.

The Pakistani Taliban on Saturday threatened to assassinate former president Pervez Musharraf when he returns to the country.

“We have prepared a special squad of suicide bombers for Musharraf,” Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.

“They will attack Musharraf after he arrives Pakistan”.

Musharraf vowed to return home Sunday to contest historic elections in May, and that he was prepared to risk any danger to his life.

“Two hundred percent! I am traveling back on Sunday to Pakistan,” he said.

“I will go by land, air or sea . . . even to the peril of my life this is the oath I took for the country.”

Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup when he was army chief of staff in 1999 and left the country after stepping down in August 2008, when Asif Ali Zardari was elected president.

He is wanted over the assassination of Zardari’s wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who died in a gun and suicide attack on December 27, 2007, just two months after her own return from years in self-imposed exile. AFP