Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan, was killed in a gun and suicide bomb attack as she was leaving a political rally at Rawalpindi. Sixteen people were killed in the attack.
Violent protests broke out across Pakistan following Bhutto's killing, particularly in her native Sindh province where hundreds of cars, trucks and buses were set alight by crowds of men chanting protests against President Pervez Musharraf. At least four people were killed on Thursday night in Sindh's capital, Karachi.
The Executive Director of the World Evangelical Alliance's Religious Liberty Commission, the Rev Johan Candelin, worked with Bhutto, 54, extensively over the years to further democracy.
He called her murder "one of the most tragic events in the history of Pakistan".
"After working together with Mrs Bhutto for democracy for several years I can say that her importance for democracy and human rights in Pakistan can never be underestimated," he stated.
Having had a Catholic nun as a home teacher in Pakistan, Bhutto had great respect for the Christian faith and a strong desire to protect all religious minorities, according to Rev Candelin.
"She told me several times that she wanted to work for Pakistan where a Jew could go to the synagogue, a Christian to the church and a Muslim to the mosque - all without any fear," he said. "She was fully aware of the risk she took when she went back to Pakistan, but said that democracy is worth risking one's life for."
Bhutto's body has since been flown back to her ancestral home in Sindh's Larkana district, accompanied by her husband Asif Ali Zardari and their three children.
Rev Candelin continued, "In the history of Pakistan she will have a very important place beside her late father who also was killed for his work for democracy."
Benazir Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, became the country's first popularly elected prime minister. He was ousted in a military coup in 1977, however, and later hanged.
In 1988, aged just 35, Bhutto became the Muslim world's first democratically elected woman prime minister. Deposed in 1990, she was re-elected in 1993, and ousted again in 1996 amid charges of corruption she said were politically motivated.
