Who killed Zia-ul-Haq?
More than ten years ago Vanity Fair published what remains the best investigated report on the air crash that killed Gen Zia-ul-Haq and everyone else on board minutes after their C-130 took off from Bahawalpur on August 17, 1988, for Islamabad. The report by Edward Jay Epstein has never been printed in Pakistan as far as I know.
Having ruled out Benazir Bhutto and her brother, the late Murtaza Bhutto and his Al-Zulfikar, as being behind the crash, Epstein examined the case against the then Soviet Union. Earlier, in August 1988, the Soviet Union had temporarily suspended troop withdrawals from Afghanistan in protest against what it said were Zias violations of the Geneva accords. Zia, charged Moscow, was not only continuing to arm the Afghan mujahideen in blatant disregard of the agreement but was directing a sabotage campaign in Kabul. The Soviets took the extraordinary step of summoning US ambassador Jack Matlock and informing him that the Soviet Union intended to teach Zia a lesson. The KGB had trained and effectively run KHAD, the Afghan intelligence service which was responsible for bombings in Pakistan that had already killed 1,400 people. Epstein absolved Moscow because in his view it would not have risked killing the American ambassador Arnold Raphael as it could have jeopardised its detente with Washington. It should be noted however that neither Raphael nor Gen Wassom, head of the US military mission, was supposed to fly back with Zia. So a question mark hangs over Soviet involvement.
What about the Indians? Rajiv Gandhi had warned Pakistan on August 15 that it would have cause to regret its behaviour in arming Sikh separatists. Ijaz-ul-Haq, then living in Bahrain, told Epstein that Zia had been persuaded to go to Bahawalpur for the tank demonstration despite misgivings. Gen Akhtar Abdul Rehmans sons said their father had been manipulated into going. This, the writer concluded, raised the possibility that it could have been the work of a faction in the army bent on an invisible coup détat.
The United States too was unhappy with Zia for diverting a good deal of aid and weapons to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar whom it considered an anti-American extremist. They were also worried about Zias nuclear programme. After the crash the FBI was told to keep out of Pakistan by Secretary of State George Schultz, though it had the authority to investigate suspicious plane crashes involving US citizens. The special team it assembled to look for forensic evidence was not deployed. The US experts assigned to the official board of inquiry appointed by Pakistan included six air force accident investigators but no criminal, counter-terrorist, or sabotage experts. Epstein thought the reason behind the US decision to stay away was its fear of the uncontrollable consequences of the investigation, such as the involvement of a superpower, a neighbour or elements from within the house. The US even distanced itself from the official Pakistani finding of sabotage by saying that the Pakistani findings were not the same as findings by American experts who said it was a malfunction that caused the crash. This story was leaked to the New York Times on October 14, 1988, three days before the official Pakistani report was released.
Interestingly, the head of the US team, Col DE Sowada, told a congressional committee later that no evidence of a mechanical failure had been found. The official Pakistani report had said the same thing, that section having been written by the American experts. Epstein said the US findings were contained in a 365 page report, sections of which were read to him by a Pentagon official. The report established that the plane had not exploded in midair but hit the ground intact. It had not been hit by a missile either, nor had there been an onboard fire. No autopsies were performed, except one on the US general who was sitting with Zia. The Pakistani report also ruled out engine failure or the use of contaminated fuel. The planes electric power was found working normally and pilot error was ruled out. Mechanical failure was also discounted.
The Pakistani inquiry found traces of certain chemicals used as explosives by saboteurs. Or it could have been poison gas which incapacitated the pilots. The report recommended a criminal investigation and suggested the handing over of the case to a competent agency. Epstein wrote that when he met Gen Hamid Gul, then head of ISI, he told him that at the request of the government, the agency had called off its inquiry and transferred it to a broader-based authority headed by FK Bandial, a senior civil servant.
When the crash occurred, there were three other planes in the area whose crews Epstein interviewed. The last words heard by the control tower were Stand by and then a faint voice saying Mashhood, Mashhood, the name of the captain. The voice was that of Zias military secretary, Brig Najib Ahmed, as one of the pilots told Epstein. It is impossible that if the plane was in trouble, the captain would not have communicated with the tower or one of the three planes. There was a long silence between Stand by said by Mashhood and Najib calling the pilots name. Tapes of the crews last minutes may exist with the US National Security Agency which routinely sucks in radio and electronic signals from all parts of the world, but they have not surfaced. Eyewitnesses saw the plane pitching up and down as if on a roller coaster. Lockheed told Epstein that this phugoid pattern was characteristic of a pilotless plane, which meant that the pilots were either dead or unconscious. This could have been caused by a gas bomb placed in the air vent in the C-130 which went off when pressurised air was fed into the cockpit.
Epstein, who went to Bahawalpur, also concluded that it would not have been difficult for any of the mechanics, including civilians, who worked on Pak-Is door for two hours to have planted a gas bomb. A chemical warfare expert told him that chemical agents which could instantaneously knock off a crew were extremely difficult to obtain but not beyond the reach of an intelligence service. Such a gas had been used in Afghanistan by the Soviets. There was also VX, a US-made gas, which could cause paralysis and loss of speech within 30 seconds. If used, it left behind phosphorus. Intriguingly, traces of phosphorus were found in Pak-I. Autopsies could have determined the cause, but were not carried out on the grounds that Islam required the dead to be buried within 24 hours. However, the bodies were not returned to the families until two days after the crash. A PAF doctor told Epstein that autopsies were routinely performed on pilots after crashes. The remains came to CMH, Bahawalpur, in plastic bags but before US and Pakistani pathologists could arrive on August 18, they were put into sealed coffins and sent away.
Police investigation of those who had access to Pak-I was also curtailed. Their questioning was not methodical, said a Pakistani official who was present. No one was interrogated. The American team only asked technical questions through a translator. A policeman at the airstrip was found murdered after the crash. This was not investigated nor was the mystery solved. The theory that it was revenge against the killing of a Shia cleric in Peshawar the pilots of both Zias plane and the standby C-130 were Shia was abandoned after a couple of months during which Flt-Lt Sajid, the other pilot, was interrogate and, wrote Epstein, even tortured. The PAF protested that even if the pilot had crashed Zias plane deliberately, he simply could not have caused it to behave the way it did. The Shiite red herring theory was only one of several efforts to limit the investigation into the crash and divert attention from the issue of sabotage, wrote Epstein. The families said that the records of calls made to Zia and Akhtar Abdul Rehman prior to the crash were destroyed. Military personnel in Bahawalpur at the time of the crash were transferred.
Taken together, these details add up to a well-organised cover-up. And if this is so, then the crash of Pak-I has to have been an inside job, Epstein argued. Only powerful elements inside Pakistan had the means to orchestrate what happened before and after the crash. But the eeriest aspect of this whole affair is the speed and effectiveness with which it was consigned to oblivion. No matter how well intentioned this cover-up might have been, the one uncounted casualty in the crash of Pak-I was the truth, he added sardonically.
Now that Ijaz-ul-Haq is a minister and can gain access to classified information, is it not incumbent upon him, first as a son and then as a citizen of Pakistan and an elected official, to determine once for all who killed Gen Zia-ul-Haq?
Who killed Zia-ul-Haq? :
there is some who still think he was good for pakistan amazing
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