The former prime minister of Pakistan may not have been killed in 2007 had U.S. ambassador Anne Patterson granted her requested security protection
Reuters/Faisal Mahmood
In October 2007, four days after a bomb killed more than 140 people in Karachi, Pakistan, at a parade celebrating Benazir Bhutto's return after eight years of exile, Bhutto, a former Pakistani prime minister who was, at the time, challenging General Pervez Musharraf for the presidency, asked for additional protection from foreign contractors. She noted that Hamid Karzai had such a protective force, and former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide had enjoyed one as well.
But U.S. ambassador Anne Patterson, whom Barack Obama has recently appointed as the State Department's special coordinator for Egypt, advised against such assistance, according to a diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks. The ambassador worried that such an evaluation of the current security measures would "inevitably expose performance gaps" and "strongly recommended against" providing an assessment or enhanced security. The cable was published in the Indian paper the Hindu Times.
Bhutto was not given better security, and, two months later, she was killed by a bomber in December 2007 while campaigning in Rawalpindi, the garrisoned home of the Pakistani military.