The assassination is likely to bring renewed attention to Pakistan’s security agencies. Ms. Bhutto had long accused the country’s main military intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, of working against her and her party because they opposed her liberal, secular agenda.
In a letter she sent to Mr. Musharraf just before her return to Pakistan in October, she listed “three individuals and more” who she said in the event that she was assassinated should be investigated for their sympathies with extremist militants.
An aide close to Ms. Bhutto said that one of those named in the letter was Ijaz Shah, the director general of the Intelligence Bureau, another of the country’s intelligence agencies and a close associate of Mr. Musharraf.
The second official was the head of the country’s National Accountability Bureau, which had investigated Ms. Bhutto on corruption charges. The third was a former official in Punjab province who had mistreated her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, when he was in jail awaiting trial on corruption charges.
Ms. Bhutto never publicly confirmed the three names in the letter and its was unclear how many names it actually included. She complained that the government investigation into the Karachi assassination attempt was not thorough and called for an independent international investigation. Since then, she had continued to accuse the government of doing too little to protect her while campaigning for nationwide elections.
In an interview after Ms. Bhutto released the letter, a close aide to Mr. Musharraf said the people named in the letter were all political enemies of Ms. Bhutto. He said they did not have sympathy with militants and the government was doing all it could to protect Ms. Bhutto. He said that militants had repeatedly vowed to kill Ms. Bhutto, who had vowed to crack down on religious extremists, and he blamed them for the Karachi attack. In a telephone interview Thursday, the same aide blamed militants for Ms. Bhutto’s assassination.
