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A
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KARACHI: The facts: on September 20,
1996, seven men were killed before the eyes of the Karachi police force
outside 70 Clifton. It was around eight in the evening.
One of those men was my father, Mir Murtaza Bhutto.
He had been on his way home after
attending a public meeting in the Karachi suburb of Surjani Town. Just
before he walked out of the house that afternoon I had come running down the
stairs to talk to him. Papa and I were supposed to play a game of basketball
and he was reneging on our deal. He promised we would play later that
evening when he returned home.
Fact: He never came home.
I felt something was amiss. There had been tanks stationed outside our house
for the last four days. Every day there was a new one across from the house
or behind it. In truth, I was worried. As he walked to the door that
afternoon I asked him to wait a minute.
"Just let me get my shoes," I pleaded. "I'm coming with you.î My father said
I couldn't come. "It's dangerous," he said. "I'll see you in the evening."
I spent the whole day feeling restless. I couldn't concentrate on anything.
I roamed around the house counting the hours until he would return. This was
before the ubiquitous cellphone had entered our lives; I had no way to reach
my father, so I waited.
Fact: by the evening of September 20, 1996, 70 to 100 policemen were
stationed near 70 Clifton. There were men in the trees, ready in sniper
positions. The streetlights had been shut and traffic diverted. Guards at
the nearby Italian, Iranian, British and Russian embassies were told to
retreat within their residences.
I was on the phone talking to a classmate about a school assignment when I
heard the first shot. My brother, Zulfikar, who was six years old at the
time, was sitting on the bed in our parent's bedroom, watching TV. We heard
one shot first. We later learned through court proceedings and police
reports that it was the signal to commence firing. When my father stepped
out of his car to ask why he was being stopped by the police, who came
without warrants, he was recognised and the command was given. One shot. A
barrage of gunfire followed. It lasted at least two to three minutes.
Fact: there was no "shootout", no "encounter", no "incident". Forensics
showed that the only artillery fired was that of the police. The tribunal
headed by Supreme Court Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid confirmed this. These
facts are public record, check them if my word is not good enough for you.
It was a premeditated attack. An ambush. An assassination.
I shut the phone and picked up Zulfikar. Both of us took shelter in the
dressing room because there were no windows there. We stayed in the small
airtight room until the shooting stopped. My mother, Ghinwa, came running
into the room and held us. We moved to the drawing room, there were no
windows in that room either. We waited. Papa would be home soon; we had no
idea he had just been killed.
Fact: The men were left to bleed on the road for approximately 45 minutes.
They received no medical attention during that time. They were, in fact,
being left to bleed to death.
Fact: Papa had not been killed in the firing. Only wounded. Though he had
been shot several times, he would have survived if not for the last bullet
wound.
Fact: After he had walked, yes walked, into the police mobile and been laid
down on the stretcher to be taken to the hospital, he was shot at point
blank range in the face. The autopsy showed that it came from an angle of
someone standing over him.
We were told by the police outside our gates that dacoits were in the area
and it wasn't safe for us to leave our house. Stay inside, they said. We
listened. They were the police. We trusted them.
When papa didn't return home and we did not receive any word from him, it
was I who found out he had been hurt.
I called my aunt, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, at the PM house in
Islamabad. Her ADC came on the phone and sounded like he had been crying.
"Are you OK Bibi?" he asked me. Of course, I was, I replied; let me talk to
my aunt. I was fourteen. I didn't know what he was saying, or rather what he
was not saying.
"I'm sorry," he said, and then he patched me through.
My aunt, Wadi I used to call her in Sindhi, did not come on the phone. Her
husband did. I didn't want to talk to Asif, do you blame me? I asked for my
aunt. He said I couldn't talk to her and that she was unable to come to the
phone. There were theatrical wailing sounds in the background. I didn't buy
it.
"Let me talk to Wadi," I demanded, in as assertive a tone as I could muster.
"She can't come to the phone," he repeated. "Don't you know? Your father's
been shot."
That's how we found out.
Fact: By the time we left for the hospital - a generous term, papa was taken
to Mideast, a clinic famous for not dealing with emergencies - the roads had
been washed clean. There was no blood, no glass, nothing to mark the scene
where the hit had taken place. Nothing.
When we saw papa at the hospital his navy blue shalwar kameez was stained
with blood. I touched his face and kissed him as we waited for doctors to
arrive. When I moved my hand, my left hand, there was blood on two of my
fingers.
My mother sat near my father and spoke to him, she shouted at him. "Don't
give up, don't die," she yelled. "Fati and Zulfikar need you," she screamed.
Fact: Every time my mother said mine and my brother's names, my father's
heart monitor would speed up. His heart was responding to our names.
Papa died after midnight. He did not succumb to his injuries. He fought
them, but when they shot him, they shot to kill. He died.
It has been ten years since that night.
Ten years of court cases and court recesses. Ten years of absconding. Ten
years of police promotions and rewards.
Fact: Intelligence Bureau chief Masood Sharif was made a Central Committee
member of my Aunt's party; Wajid Durrani was promoted to the rank of deputy
inspector general of a special police branch in Karachi; Rai Tahir was made
a senior superintendent of the police in the Punjab; Shahid Hayat is
currently the director of the Federal Investigation Agency; and after
leading the Balochistan police force during the American invasion of
Afghanistan, Shoaib Suddle was then promoted to head the commission on
police reforms and is now the head commissioner of crimes against women.
Those who are killed fighting for life cannot be called dead. On Monday
night, on what would have been my father's 52nd birthday, my family and I
went to lay flowers on the spot near our house where he was killed. There
was a large crowd around us throwing rose petals and chanting slogans in his
memory. As we read the Fateha and said a silent happy birthday for papa, I
looked up around me. The rose petals were still being thrown; it seemed as
if it was raining flowers.
The largest mistake my father's killers made was one that they could not
help. They could not kill all of us, all of us who were enraged and
disgusted by the state's public assassination of an elected official. They
could not murder our memory. And they could not and still cannot silence our
calls for justice. That will be their undoing at the end. |