Fatima at Bhutto’s grave in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, Sindh. (AFP)

Islamabad, Dec. 29 (PTI): Benazir Bhutto’s niece Fatima, who shared a love-hate relationship with her slain aunt, said the former Prime Minister was a “victim of senseless killing” and she was yet to see someone in the family dying of natural causes.

“I am in shock because I have yet to bury a loved one who has died from natural causes,” Fatima, who called Benazir “Wadi Bua”, a Sindhi term for a father’s elder sister, said. “Four. That’s the number of family members, immediate family members, whom we have laid to rest, all victims of senseless, senseless killing.”

Fatima said she was “born five years after” the “assassination” of her grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

“I was three when my uncle Shahnawaz was murdered. I remember Wadi Bua sitting with me and telling me stories while the rest of the family was with police.… When I was 14, my life was ended. I lost my heart and soul, my father Murtaza,” Fatima, often compared with Benazir, wrote in The News.

“But this isn’t about me. It’s about the graveyard at Garhi Khuda Bakhsh that is just too full.” Fatima had recently authored another article on Benazir — Aunt Benazir’s false promises — in which she called her a “twice-disgraced former Prime Minister” who was “hashing out a deal to share power with General Pervez Musharraf”.

Fatima said she and Benazir had a “complicated” relationship. “That is the truth, the sad truth. The last 15 years were not ones we spent as friends or as relatives, that is also the truth.”

She said this was the most difficult article she has written.

“We used to read children’s books together. We used to like exactly the same sweets — sugared chestnuts and candied apples. We used to get the same ear infections, ear infections that tortured us and plagued us throughout the years.”