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 Valéry 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.

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