ISLAMABAD: The murder of chief prosecutor, nonstop threats to witnesses, police officers and the judge, coupled with an untidy judicial system have all contributed to hinder Benazir Bhutto’s murder trial, seven years after the former Pakistani prime minister’s assassination.
The killing of Benazir marked the end of the long political legacy of the Bhutto family.
Seven years later, the country is still clueless as to who had masterminded her assassination since yet there is no dearth of the probable culprits to choose from: al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked Islamic extremists, former military dictator Pervez Musharraf and his associates, or some contract killers hired by her political rivals, including Musharraf?
Whatever the conspiracy theory is, it keeps getting denser with each passing day. In fact, even those investigating her murder under the Asif Zardari-led Pakistan People’s Party government had consumed full five years to finally believe in her own declaration that Musharraf should be held responsible in case of her assassination.
Therefore, it was in April 2013 that the Rawalpindi Anti-Terrorist Court had finally indicted Musharraf in her murder case and ordered a retrial. But despite the February 14, 2013 clear orders by the Rawalpindi Bench of the Lahore High Court to hear the case on daily basis and complete the trial within three months, the Bhutto murder case has not been heard since October 8, 2014.
The orders for daily hearing were passed by on petition filed by Federal Investigation Agency’s chief prosecutor in the case Zulfiqar Ali who had contended that a trial court, under the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997, was bound to hold daily hearing of cases for their quick disposal.
He further apprised the court that counsel for all the accused were using delaying tactics to linger on the case, which was evident from the fact that not even a single murder case of 2007 was pending in the ATC-I except the Bhutto murder case.
However, hardly four weeks after the court passed orders for daily hearing of the Bhutto murder case, Ali was shot dead in Islamabad on May 3, 2013 while he was on his way to the court to attend the hearing of Benazir Bhutto’s murder case.
Inspector General of the Islamabad Police Binyamin Khan revealed that the police had found a letter from the crime scene, written by the Taliban and claiming responsibility for the assassination. Days before his murder, Ali had said that he had gathered solid evidence to indict the under trial assassins of Bhutto.
Following intense investigations, Islamabad Police finally arrested Abdullah Umar, the son of an ex-army officer, who confessed having killed Ali along with his three accomplices Hammad Adil, Adnan Adil and Tanveer Ahmed.
While Umar was injured and paralysed during the attack on Ali, another assailant Harris Khan was killed by his gunman and was buried in the lawn of the Adil brothers’ house in Rawalpindi.
However, since Ali’s assassination, the Benazir murder case is going nowhere. Six different judges have headed the murder trial and the prosecution has filed eight separate charge sheets ever since the proceeding started on February 29, 2008, which have added to the delay as have the investigations by two different investigation teams.
Internews
