How and why Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was executed
Robert Trumbull. Bhutto hanged in a Pakistani prison on charges of conspiracy to assassinate
Islamabad, Pakistan, Wednesday, April 4 [1979] -- Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan, was hanged early today in District Jail Rawalpindi, where he had been held since his conviction last year for plotting to assassinate a political opponent in 1974.
A senior military government official said the execution took place at 4:00 a.m. The spokesman, Squadron Leader Mohammed Afzal, said the body was immediately taken to Bhutto's birthplace near Larkana in Sindh province and buried in a ceremony attended by family members.
Prison sources said the execution took place in the presence of representatives of the military government led by President Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq, the army general who ousted Bhutto on July 5, 1977. Bhutto had ruled for five and a half years.
The decision to execute Bhutto was taken by General Zia-ul-Haq despite numerous appeals for clemency from dozens of world leaders, including President Carter, Leonid Brezhnev, Hua Guofeng and Pope John Paul II, as well as thousands of Pakistani citizens who admired Bhutto's policies and his ability to connect with the masses in a country of 75 million people.
Police and troops have been deployed
According to reports from several provincial centers, police and troops have already been deployed in large numbers at key points in major cities and towns [in anticipation of] the spread News about execution.
Bhutto's top supporters had been jailed by government order for several weeks, apparently in anticipation of unrest if he were executed, and the authorities who imposed martial law were apparently making plans to suppress any unrest after the execution.
General Zia's closest aides insisted late into the evening that the president had still not decided whether to order the execution or commute the death sentence to life imprisonment. They said he was unlikely to take any action for several days.
However, news of the execution appeared in supplemental editions of several Urdu-language newspapers early in the morning, based on reports from prison sources. By mid-afternoon, the government had still not made an official statement.
The once elegant and secular Bhutto, then 51, was taken from death row around midnight. He was washed and then allowed to listen to prayers for the condemned, recited by a Muslim priest, quoting excerpts from the Quran.
As Bhutto was led to the gallows, other death row inmates lined up outside their cells and chanted traditional mourning songs in memory of the condemned man, sources said.
Bhutto was led to the gallows, a noose was placed around his neck, and two officers took hold of his arms.
Bhutto was convicted along with five former members of his secret police for planning the assassination of parliamentary critic Ahmed Raza Kasuri.
Early in the morning of November 11, 1974 (the text is incorrectly dated 1979 – P.G.), Kasuri's car was ambushed and shot at as he and his family were returning from a wedding reception. Kasuri was unharmed, but his father was killed in the attack. All five defendants were sentenced to death by hanging.
(Reuters reported that the other four [convicted], namely Mian Mohammed Appas, Guilam Mustafa, Arrad Iqbal and Rana Isti Khan, were also hanged today.)
Long visit with family
A possible sign of an imminent execution emerged yesterday when Bhutto's wife, Nusrat, and daughter, Benazir, who had been under house arrest, were allowed to spend three hours with him in his cell instead of the usual half hour. (Reuters reported that Bhutto, in a note given to her lawyer, said she had been told this would be their last visit.)
Yesterday, as the country waited tensely for the president's decision on Bhutto's fate, security forces raided three houses belonging to the former prime minister and seized official documents he had collected during his time in office.
A close aide of General Zia privately told several American correspondents last night that the president first turned against the former prime minister when he was shown a list of his political opponents. The aide said some names on the list were marked in Bhutto's own hand as subject to "liquidation".
"Secret documents" found
A Sindh police statement yesterday said officers who conducted searches at Bhutto's homes in Karachi, his hometown of Larkana and the village of Naundero found "classified documents of a highly confidential nature relating to national security, including defense and foreign policy"The statement said most of the documents were found hidden in secret cabinets, inside mattresses and in cabinets behind mirrors in a house in Karachi.
Mumtaz Ali Bhutto, the former prime minister's cousin who served as his information minister, told reporters that security forces also raided three Bhutto family ancestral villages on Monday evening, forcibly entering women's quarters traditionally closed to men. "while beating the maids".
The New York Times
4 April 1979 city
4 April 1979 city
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