Musharraf’s Narrow Escape: In Search of Culprits

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan says it was “destiny” that saved him from an assassination attempt on the rainy evening of Dec. 14, when several bombs destroyed a bridge just moments after his motorcade sped across. The more prosaic explanation is that the President’s car was outfitted with a jamming device, which blocked the killers’ remote-controlled detonator for a few vital seconds, saving Musharraf’s life. Yet the shock waves from that near miss are still resounding. Since Musharraf signed on as a key partner in the Bush Administration’s war on terrorism, he has survived at least one other attempt to kill him. Diplomats say there may have been at least two others during his four-year tenure—all kept secret. Musharraf brushed off this last one as “an occupational hazard,” but investigators say it was probably an inside job. Someone close to the President leaked the secret details of the motorcade’s route and its time of departure. Who was behind the attempt? Al-Qaeda is suspected since Musharraf’s men grabbed most of the top al-Qaeda fighters now in U.S. custody. But intelligence sources in Islamabad told TIME that al-Qaeda probably doesn’t have the Pakistani connections to pull off the attempt. Most likely, the sources say, the culprits were disgruntled Islamic extremists furious with Musharraf for siding with the U.S. in Afghanistan and scaling back support for militants fighting in Kashmir. Investigators are grilling policemen posted along the President’s route, army men from the nearby barracks and clergymen with suspected ties to Islamic extremists, authorities say. “Destiny” may have saved Musharraf this time, but no one is betting that it won’t happen again.