'Benazir had cell numbers of her assassins'

New York, Feb 12: Pakistani ex-premier Benazir Bhutto returned to Karachi on October 18 last year with the names and cell phone numbers of her possible assassins, she wrote in a book a few days before her assassination on December 27 in Rawalpindi.

Officials in Pakistan had told her that four suicide bomber had been sent by Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, Osama bin Laden's son Hamza, and two militant groups to assassinate her, Benazir wrote in "Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West," slated to be released worldwide on Tuesday. "I had actually received from a sympathetic Muslim foreign government the names and cell numbers of designated assassins," Benazir wrote.

After a foiled assassination bid on her life on October 18, Benazir wrote that she knew that a cover-up would be under way "from the very first moments of the attack" that she said was "clearly meant to appear to be an al Qaeda-style suicide attack," the Dawn reported.

"This was meant to look like the work of al Qaeda and the Taliban, and I do not doubt they were involved," she wrote in the book published by News Corp's HarperCollins.

"But the sophistication of the plan ... suggested a larger conspiracy," Benazir added.

ANI