Benazir Bhutto, first female prime minister of Pakistan and of any Islamic nation.Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated December 27, 2007 in Rawalpindi, was the first female prime minister of Pakistan and of any Islamic nation. She led Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996.

Bhutto, 54, spent eight years in self-imposed exile in Great Britain and Dubai after President Farooq Leghari dismissed her second administration amid accusations of corruption, intimidation of the judiciary, a breakdown of law and order, and undermining the justice system.

She was found guilty of corruption and sentenced to five years in prison. The conviction was later overturned but she remained in exile until this year.

She returned to Pakistan in October after President Pervez Musharraf signed an amnesty lifting corruption charges.

She narrowly escaped injury on October 18 when a suicide bombing near her convoy in Karachi killed 126 people.

"Soon thereafter, I was asked by authorities not to travel in cars with tinted windows -- which protected me from identification by terrorists -- or travel with privately armed guards," she wrote for CNN.com in November.

"I began to feel the net was being tightened around me when police security outside my home in Karachi was reduced, even as I was told that other assassination plots were in the offing."

"I decided not to be holed up in my home, a virtual prisoner," she wrote. "I went to my ancestral village of Larkana to pray at my father's grave. Everywhere, the people rallied around me in a frenzy of joy. I feel humbled by their love and trust."

Musharraf declared a state of emergency and placed Bhutto under house arrest twice in November as anti-government rallies grew in Rawalpindi. The arrest warrant was lifted November 16.

She filed a nomination paper for a parliamentary seat on November 25 and appeared headed for a power showdown with Musharraf before she was assassinated Thursday.

Bhutto was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, former president and prime minister of Pakistan, who was hanged in 1979 for the murder of a political opponent two years after he was ousted as prime minister in a military coup.

Her brother, Murtaza, was killed along with six others in a 1996 shootout with police at his home.

--Article from CNN.