Saturday, May 01, 2010
What prevents it?
Roedad Khan
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan, shocked and saddened the people of Pakistan and of the world. The chain of events beginning with BB’s decision to return to Pakistan to participate in the election campaign, the unsuccessful attempt to kill her in Karachi, and her assassination on December 27, 2007 in Rawalpindi, evoked the demand, at home and abroad, for an explanation.
The intense public demand for facts was met by the establishment, and, on the request of the Pakistan government, a three-member UN commission of inquiry was formed. It was agreed that the international commission should be fact-finding in nature and that its mandate would be to determine the facts and circumstances of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. The commission conducted more than 250 interviews – both inside and outside Pakistan. It is worth noting that the report does not include either a list of those interviewed or their statements.
The commission, though, mystified by the efforts of certain high-ranking officials to obstruct access to Pakistan’s military and intelligence sources, submitted its 65-page report to the secretary general of the UN in April. It made it quite clear that the duty of carrying out a serious credible, criminal investigation to determine who conceived, ordered, and executed this heinous crime remains with the government of Pakistan. Tragically, no such investigation has been ordered so far. Instead, to add insult to injury, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has set up another fact-finding committee composed of two civil servants and a major general of the Pakistan Army.
Flash back to November 22, 1963, the day John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States was assassinated. On November 29, 1963, a week after the assassination, President Johnson, by Executive Order 11130, created a commission, with the chief justice of the United States as its chairman, to investigate the assassination. The commission functioned neither as a court presiding over an adversary proceeding nor as a prosecutor determined to prove a case but as a fact-finding body committed to the ascertainment of the truth.
The commission directed major departments of the federal government and intelligence agencies to submit all relevant information available with them. The Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted approximately 25,000 interviews of persons having information of possible relevance to the investigation. By September 1964, it submitted over 2,300 reports totaling approximately 25,400 pages to the commission. During the same period, the secret services conducted approximated 1,550 interviews and submitted 800 reports totaling some 4,600 pages. The commission reviewed in detail the reports and actions of these agencies and called their highest officials to testify under oath. The commission itself examined 552 witnesses having information of relevance to the investigation.
In sharp contrast, the lackadaisical manner in which the PPP government is conducting the inquiry into the assassination of its leader, without any sense of urgency, purpose or direction, clearly shows that it is not interested in ascertaining the truth and unmasking the killer. Isn’t it a great tragedy that after 28 months of Benazir’s assassination, the government has yet to carry out a serious, credible investigation to determine who conceived, ordered, and executed this heinous crime?
What is preventing this government from appointing a high-level judicial commission, with the chief justice as its chairman to ascertain the truth? Why this reluctance to face the truth? Who is protecting the perpetrators of this dastardly crime against a courageous woman full of promise, this crime against a family, a nation and all mankind.
The writer is a former federal secretary.
Email:
roedad@comsats.net.pk,