Bhutto's Sudden, Shabby End

A secret execution inspires revulsion and protest

"If I am assassinated on the gallows, there will be turmoil and turbulence, conflict and conflagration."

--A death-cell prediction by former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

The sputter of midnight traffic had given way to the long wait for dawn when the 1,400 inmates of Rawalpindi District Jail began to pray. Imperceptibly at first, their murmur grew as they recited from the Koran; the time for execution was approaching. Shortly before 2 a.m., the prisoner, gaunt and ailing, was led from his dungeon death cell to the scaffolding. His hands were tied behind his back. Stepping to the gallows he cried out, according to one account, "Oh Lord, help me, for I am innocent!" Thirty-five minutes later, the body was cut down, taken away to a waiting air force plane and flown to the town of Larkana, 200 miles northeast of Karachi. There, in his family's burial plot, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, 51, the most popular civilian politician to come to power in Pakistan's 32 years of independence, was hastily interred last week before the country was told of his death.

It was a sudden and shabby end to a once illustrious political career and a long personal ordeal for Bhutto. It began when his government was overthrown by General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq in July 1977. The former Prime Minister was arrested and subsequently charged with concocting a botched plot to assassinate Ahmed Raza Kasuri, 43, a former political associate, in 1974. Kasuri survived the ambush by gunmen who fired on his car, but his father was killed. There were doubts about the extent of Bhutto's guilt and the fairness of his original trial. When the Supreme Court, by a narrow 4-to-3 majority, upheld the guilty verdict, pleas for clemency poured in from world leaders, including President Carter, the Soviet Union's Leonid Brezhnev, China's Hua Guofeng (Hua Kuo-feng), Britain's James Callaghan and Pope John Paul II.

Several months ago, Zia had served notice that he intended to "hang the blighter," as he put it, but hope persisted that he would spare Bhutto's life if only to save his troubled country from another divisive emotional trauma. Thus reaction to the execution last week was one of shock and dismay. French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who had just drafted another appeal to Zia, expressed his "profound emotion" at the execution. Britain's Guardian editorialized: "Death came to Bhutto not with the due panoply of justice but like a thief in the night, a deed done shamefully, apprehensively, and with desperation."

In an attempt to forestall protests in Pakistan, the government carried out the death sentence in utmost secrecy. The time of the execution was moved up four hours from the usual 6 a.m. so that Bhutto's body could be buried before the news broke. Armed police were moved into position around the prison during the night. Three Pakistani journalists on the scene were arrested and held until the next day. Only Bhutto's wife Nusrat and his daughter Benazir, 26, who have been under house arrest near Islamabad for months, were informed that the end was near. They were taken to Bhutto's grimy cell, equipped only with a bare mattress on the floor, for a final visit.

Despite martial law and a massive police presence in major cities, violent disturbances broke out all across the country. After an impassioned prayer meeting in Rawalpindi's Liaquat Gardens, 5,000 grieving Pakistanis clashed with police, hurling glass and rocks at buses and cars. One bus was burned before police dispersed the crowd with tear gas. "We are fed up," said an office worker as he fled for shelter. "Our own leaders are the enemy. Zia should hang by the same rope."

A spellbinding orator who conveyed the image of a populist reformer, Bhutto was the son of a wealthy landowner from Sind province. After earning degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and from Oxford, where he cultivated a taste for fine tailoring and vintage wines, he began his career as a delegate to the U.N. As Foreign Minister in the military government of General Muhammed Ayub Khan, he helped fashion Pakistan's policy of friendship with China. After his country's humiliating defeat in the war that led to independence for Bangladesh, Bhutto, who had quit the Cabinet in 1966 to form his own party, was asked by the generals to take over the government. In what was perhaps his finest hour, he restored national pride, negotiated the release of nearly 90,000 prisoners of war, initiated political and economic reforms and gave the country its longest period of civilian rule in three decades.

But Bhutto's followers were accused of blatantly rigging the March 1977 elections to ensure his party an overwhelming victory. After months of rioting and turmoil, Bhutto agreed to void the election. A few days later, General Zia, whom Bhutto had named army Chief of Staff, overthrew the government.

There may have been some cold-eyed motives behind Zia's rejection of world opinion and his decision to ignore the Supreme Court's implied suggestion of clemency. Zia and his military supporters took a calculated risk--namely, that the long-term benefits of getting rid of a political nemesis outweighed the immediate law-and-order problem raised by pro-Bhutto demonstrations. Whether or not the generals win their gamble, the execution of this proud but flawed man was a dangerous event for an unstable country with pressing economic problems and a frustrated electorate.

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