AlHijjah 9, 1432, Nov 5, 2011, SPA -- A Pakistani court on Saturday indicted five Islamist militants and two police officers in the high-profile assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, prosecutors said according to Reuters. Bhutto, the first female prime minister in the Muslim world, was killed in a gun and suicide attack in 2007 in one of the most shocking events in Pakistan's turbulent history. An anti-terrorism court indicted the seven men in a hearing held behind closed door in the city of Rawalpindi for security reasons. "They have been charged with conspiracy as well as abetment in the murder," Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali, a government prosecutor, told Reuters. The charismatic Bhutto was killed on Dec. 27, 2007 as she waved to a crowd through the sunroof of a sports utility vehicle following an election rally in Rawalpindi weeks after she returned to Pakistan from a self-imposed exile after striking a deal with then military ruler Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf's government had blamed Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud for the killing. Mehsud was killed in a U.S. drone strike near the Afghan border in 2009. The five Taliban militants were charged with "criminal conspiracy" for bringing the suicide bomber from the tribal belt in the northwest to Rawalpindi where he carried out the attack, another prosecutor Mohammad Azhar said. -- SPA
