An appeal from beyond the grave

In 1988 I arrived in Pakistan a few hours after the assassination of Zia ul-Huq, the military dictator whose aircraft had been blown to pieces by a bomb. In most countries the violent death of a leader, who had dominated politics for more than a decade, would trigger soul-searching, or at the very least a determination to find out who had killed him and why. But within days of the assassination it was clear that there was little appetite to probe the latest chapter in Pakistan’s violent history. Zia was given a state funeral and quickly forgotten by his countrymen. Twenty years after his murder, the circumstances of his death remain a mystery.

The same fate could have befallen Benazir Bhutto, when assassins attacked her armoured car in the city of Rawalpindi on 27 January during the closing days of her election campaign. Footage seemed to show that she was shot by a gunman, but official investigators insisted that she died of head injuries caused by the impact of an explosion against her armoured car.