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.” In an interview with AFP in Dubai Friday, former military ruler Musharraf said he would definitely return home Sunday to contest historic elections in May, and that he was prepared to risk any danger to his life.
“200 per cent! I am travelling 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.