Zulfikar Ali Bhutto - Re-arrest and Trial

Re-arrest and Trial

See also: Operation Fair Play

On 3 September the Army arrested Bhutto again on charges of authorising the murder of a political opponent in March 1974. A 35-year-old politician Ahmed Raza Kasuri and his family had been ambushed, leaving Kasuri's father, Nawab Muhammad Ahmad Khan Kasuri, dead. Kasuri claimed that he was the actual target, accusing Bhutto of orchestrating the attack. Kasuri later claimed that he had been the target of 15 assassination attempts.

Bhutto's wife Nusrat Bhutto assembled a team of top Pakistani lawyers for Bhutto's defence, led by Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim, Yahya Bakhtiar and Abdulhafiz Pirzada.

Bhutto was released 10 days after his arrest after a judge, Justice KMA Samadani, found the evidence to be "contradictory and incomplete." As a result, Justice Samadani was immediately removed from the bench and placed at the disposal of the law ministry. Three days later Zia arrested Bhutto again on the same charges, this time under "martial law." When the PPP organised demonstrations among Bhutto's supporters, Zia cancelled the upcoming elections.

Bhutto was arraigned before the High Court of Lahore instead of in a lower court, thus depriving him of one level of appeal. The judge who had granted him bail had been removed. Five new judges were appointed, headed by Chief Justice of Lahore High Court Maulvi Mushtaq Hussain. Hussain had previously served as Bhutto's Foreign secretary in 1965, and was alleged to have strongly disliked and distrusted Bhutto, and a conspiracy planned by him and Ayub Khan had removed Bhutto from his cabinet. Hussain was a known in public as detractor of Bhutto and made no secret of his dislike and enmity with the former Prime Minister, and as a result Hussain denied Bhutto bail.

The trial lasted five months, and Bhutto appeared in court in a dock specially built for the trial.

Proceedings began on 24 October 1977. Masood Mahmood, the director general of the Federal Security Force (since renamed the Federal Investigation Agency), testified against Bhutto. Mahmood had been arrested immediately after Zia's coup and had been imprisoned for two months prior to taking the stand. In his testimony, he claimed Bhutto had ordered Kasuri's assassination and that four members of the Federal Security Force had organised the ambush on Bhutto's orders.

The four alleged assassins were arrested and later confessed. They were brought into court as "co-accused" but one of them recanted his testimony, declaring that it had been extracted from him under torture. The following day, the witness was not present in court and the prosecution claimed that he had suddenly "fallen ill".

Bhutto's defence team fought the case efficiently and challenged the prosecution with evidence from an army logbook the prosecution had submitted. It showed that the jeep allegedly driven during the attack on Kasuri was not even in Lahore at the time. The prosecution had the logbook disregarded as "incorrect". During the defence's cross-examination of witnesses, the bench often interrupted questioning. The 706-page official transcript contained none of the objections or inconsistencies in the evidence pointed out by the defence. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who attended the trial, called the trial a mock trial fought in a Kangaroo court. Having witnessed the trial, Clark later wrote:

The prosecution's case was based entirely on several witnesses who were detained until they confessed, who changed and expanded their confessions and testimony with each reiteration, who contradicted themselves and each other, who, except for Masood Mahmood... were relating what others said, whose testimony led to four different theories of what happened, absolutely uncorroborated by an eyewitness, direct evidence, or physical evidence

.

When Bhutto began his testimony on 25 January 1978, Chief Justice Maulvi Mushtaq closed the courtroom to all observers. Bhutto responded by refusing to say any more. Bhutto demanded a retrial, accusing the Chief Justice of bias, after Mushtaq allegedly insulted Bhutto's home province. The court refused his demand.