The date September 13, 1977, remains unforgettable in our history. Reason: It was on this day that Lahore High Court Justice KM Samdani released former prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Shaheed on bail.
A large number of PPP workers and foreign journalists gathered at Nawab Sadiq Hussain Qureshi’s residence when Mr Bhutto arrived from the courts in the company of Rana Shaukat Mahmood. Daily Musawat Editor Syed Badruddin and I also joined in. On seeing me, Mr Bhutto asked, “Riaz, how are you.” I replied that “lucky to see you.”
Mr. Bhutto held a press conference and then met Badruddin and me in separate meetings. Badruddin had been conveyed by a senior military official that “Bhutto’s reign is over, you should be careful.” I was conveyed a similar message by a close friend at Lahore’s Inter-Continental Hotel. The friend was none other than AR Shefta who told me that “I should forget about Bhutto and start writing against him instead of praising him.” This caused considerable rancour between us. Shefta was a close friend of dictator Ziaul Haq and he was riding high during martial law. Anybody who was somebody wanted to meet him.
Shefta was a cousin of former federal secretary Dr. Zafar Altaf, who, as Sahiwal’s Deputy Commissioner, had helped me a lot. I was a close witness to a very dark chapter of Pakistan’s history. It all happened in the fateful August of 1977 when I was in Karachi. Shefta stayed at Karachi’s Inter-Continental Hotel and invited me for a meeting. He gave the explosive news that Bhutto would be arrested as an accused in Ahmad Raza Qasuri’s murder. Shefta claimed that he had seen the files personally where Mr Bhutto had written in his own writing to “eliminate him, dispose him off, liquidate him.” Appalled, I asked Shefta when they would arrest Mr Bhutto. “Very soon,” he replied. I was perhaps the first person to know the dark conspiracy that Zia had hatched to frame Prime Minister Bhutto and so he was arrested days later on 3rd September, 1977 from his residence 70 Clifton.
When I met Mr. Bhutto later on September 13th I told him about Shefta’s disclosure. He said he knew that Shefta was Zia’s friend and the dictator had obliged him by giving lucrative contracts. About the allegation that he had ordered Ahmad Raza Qasuri’s murder, he remarked that “this is cheap propaganda to frame me; I am a lawyer; how can I order such a ghastly crime on the official file of the Prime Minister; and then Ahmad Raza Qasuri had no such worth that I should have cared for him.”
In my over 30-minute meeting, I persistently urged Mr. Bhutto to leave the country to avoid this conspiracy. It was a critical moment for him, the PPP and the country. But Mr. Bhutto, the brave patriot that he was, remained unruffled. “This is my country and I shall fight it here; there is no question of my running away.” Mr. Bhutto repeated the same words to Badruddin who had also begged him to leave.
Bhutto’s answer, while being fretful for me, gave me immense courage. I requested for a message to expatriate Pakistanis who were better placed to mobilize international voices against such dark conspiracy. So Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Shaheed gave me a written message for Pakistanis abroad. Here I quote him from my book Bhutto Khandan Jehed-i-Musalsal: “Our beloved Pakistan is going through a deep crisis. And this crisis is graver than all earlier dilemmas, deprivations, defeats and national wear and tear. The conscience of free nations gets satisfied only by the rule of people and its perception and pursuit cannot be materialized without politics, democracy and the rule of law. You, my friends abroad, know from your exposure of living in democratic countries that a democratic and constitutional government is a need of the hour. And herein lies the solution to all our political and economic problems. You strive for the restoration of democracy and the Constitution and help those who want Pakistan to be exploitation-free, civilized, Islamic and a just nation as envisioned by Quaid-i-Azam.
On September 13, 1977, Begum Bhutto reached from Islamabad to Lahore to receive her illustrious husband and together they took off to Larkana to celebrate Eidul Fitr. He was re-arrested on September 16. I left for London on September 22 and mobilized all resources to make his written message known internationally. This was the beginning of the grand international movement that we the PPP workers started for the cause of our beloved leader. Our effort for Bhutto Shaheed’s release got noticed. Pakistanis abroad organized big public meetings to mobilize world public opinion. Bhutto’s sons, Murtaza Bhutto and Shahnawaz Bhutto, launched campaign to expose loop holes in the fake cases against the great leader who brought the Islamic world together.
Zia’s pal Shefta had warned me about this conspiracy in August which proved true on that fateful day of April 4, 1977. Bhutto Sahib’s sons, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, had planned an international jurists conference before his execution on 6th and 7th April, 1977. This conference took place in London’s Carlton Tower Hotel in Knightsbridge. The participant passed a unanimous resolution calling Bhutto Shaheed’s execution as “a judicial murder.” This resolution was sent to then UN Secretary General Curt Warldhiem. American Trial Lawyers Association member Goerge T Davis declared that the Bhutto case was not a murder trial but the murder of an innocent person by the government.
Turkey’s representative Selly Donamiere said “the decisions of the Lahore High Court and of the Supreme Court were not holy judgments of holy courts”, which warrants that we should identify loop holes in it. Known British lawyer John Mathews QC had especially came to Lahore to monitor the Bhutto trial. His observation was that if the case had been in a British court it would have been thrown out after the first hearing. British MP Jonathan Aitkon declared that Bhutto’s execution was a “barbarous political murder.”
International Commission for Jurists Chairman William J Butler commented that holding of a Press conference by a Chief Justice is a travesty of courts and justice. LSE Professor Leslie Phillips remarked that an illegitimate government executed a great leader through an unjust case. Renowned world jurists were unanimous in declaring Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto as an innocent victim and his execution as “murder by the state”.
