Benazir agreed to be PM under Zia: Fatima

This week sees the launch of Fatima Bhutto's book Songs of Blood and Sword, which seems to reveal the inside story of the assassination of Murtaza Bhutto, the deep divisions between the Bhutto family and raises serious questions about former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. In Devil's Advocate, Karan Thapar spoke to Murtaza Bhutto's daughter and Benazir Bhutto's niece Fatima Bhutto.

Karan Thapar: Fatima Bhutto, let's start with your father's assassination on 20th of September 1996. After the shooting had stopped and as the hours ticked by and he failed to come home, you rang your aunt Benazir Bhutto who was the Prime Minister of Pakistan at that time. What followed was a harrowing and chilling conversation. Let's start by asking you to give details of that conversation.

Fatima Bhutto: Well, after some time had passed and my father didn't return home, and this whole being before cell phones and text messaging, you know there had been a big buildup around our house. We had been surrounded by tanks, by policemen. We had enough and I thought I am going to call my aunt because perhaps they have arrested my father, perhaps they have done something, I am going to call and ask what's happened. I called and it was quite clear that her ADC, her operator was already aware at that point of time what happened. He kept asking me if we were okay, if my family was alright, and I had no idea what he was referring to. Eventually I was connected to her husband, the current President [of Pakistan], Asif Ali Zardari who said I cannot speak to my aunt. When I insisted that it was important, he said she can't come to the phone, she is hysterical. I was fourteen years old and I had no idea what he was talking about. I said: look it's very urgent. At that point of time he, very calmly, and very coldly said to me: don't you know? Your father has been shot. At that point I dropped the phone.

Karan Thapar: And it was in this callous unfeeling way that your uncle broke the news of your father's killing?

Fatima Bhutto: Yes, and of course to say that to a child who was so attached to her father was so unbearably cruel that I convinced myself immediately that it must not be serious. Otherwise why would he have said this to me?

Karan Thapar: What you then discovered that after the shooting, instead of taking your father to an emergency hospital, the police took him to a dispensary. Do you suspect that it was to ensure that he didn't survive?

Fatima Bhutto: Well absolutely. And the tribunal that had no power to impose sentence or enact any legal punishment said that it was done on purpose. None of the seven men killed that night were taken to emergency hospital. They were all taken to different locations. They were all taken pass the time when they could have been saved. My father was taken to a dispensary where the doctors had their outpatient facility. It was a place which had sign outside its front door saying -no emergency. It was very clear that that was not a hospital where doctors could be found to save anybody's life.

Karan Thapar: So a man who was dying, who needed immediate attention was taken to a dispensary which actually said - no emergencies?

Fatima Bhutto: Not just that but the police dropped my father at the hospital and left.

Karan Thapar: They didn't even register him at the dispensary?

Fatima Bhutto: No.

Karan Thapar: So they just disposed off him as if it was an unknown body?

Fatima Bhutto: As if it was an unknown body...yes.

Karan Thapar: Much later, for the purposes of this book, you interviewed Farooq Lehgari, who at the time of assassination of your father, was the President of Pakistan, and he actually told you that he had proof that Asif Zardari wanted to eliminate your father.

Fatima Bhutto: I didn't interview Lehgari. He was interviewed by various channels of Pakistan. Only recently, in the past three months, he came out and said that Asif Zardari, the current President, went to him, when he was the sitting President and said that this man has to be eliminated.

Karan Thapar: Actually and in so many words?

Fatima Bhutto: He has given the interview in Urdu, in English and Saraiki, and he said on television that Asif Zardari has the blood of Murtaza Bhutto on his hands and god knows how many other people.

Karan Thapar: Do you believe that Asif Zardari is involved in the killing of your father?

Fatima Bhutto: Yes.

Karan Thapar: Do you believe that Benazir Bhutto has a role to play?

Fatima Bhutto: Yes. Unfortunately.

Karan Thapar: I am going to ask you to repeat that you actually believe that your bua (aunt), your father's elder sister is responsible in some way for the murder of your father.

Fatima Bhutto: She presided over a state of lawlessness. My father was one of thousands killed under her second government so certainly she bears a moral responsibility. And after his murder, my aunt played a strong role in the cover-up. We were forbidden from filing an FIR. All the witnesses were arrested. They had no access to their lawyers, their families. In fact, they were kept in jail till her government fell.

Karan Thapar: So, both before and then immediately after what happened, and then in the cover-up--in all three stages you believe there are serious question marks about her behaviour.

Fatima Bhutto: Certainly. Masood Sharif was, at that time, head of the Intelligence Bureau and reported to the office of the Prime Minister, was at the scene of the crime that night was several years later inducted into the central committee of Benazir's party. Now, to induct a man who has been publicly accused of your brother's murder sends a certain signal.

Karan Thapar: Years later, right at the end of your book, you quote something that she said just before Benazir died. She actually said that your father was responsible for his own death.

Fatima Bhutto: Yes. She remained committed to the police line. And just before her own murder, she tried to insinuate on television that not only Murtaza had himself killed, that he had a suicidal wish, but that his own guards killed him. She said that he was shot from the back which certainly he was not, and that his body bore tales of his death, which it certainly does but it has nothing to do with the claims that Benazir was making.

Karan Thapar: Your book also sketches out, the growing difference leading to the rift between your father Murtaza and his sister Benazir. Although the problems perhaps began earlier, they began to crystallize after the death of General Zia in 1988. When your father wanted to return to Pakistan, your grand mother Nusrat Bhutto was in favour of it but Benazir was bitterly opposed. Why was she opposed to her brother's return?

Fatima Bhutto: One year after their brother Shahnawaz's murder in 1986, Benazir had begun to negotiate with the military establishment in Pakistan to take power. And she was preparing, one would assume, to be General Zia's Prime Minister, who was still alive at that time. The differences really started then. My father couldn't understand how she was willing to negotiate with the very establishment that had killed their father, that they believed had their brother killed, all for the sake of power. She was willing to accept the IMF dictate; she was willing to let the army control foreign policy.

Karan Thapar: But then, when Zia died that that chapter was, in a sense, over, why then did she stop your father from returning.

Fatima Bhutto: I think because the compromises remained. She was Prime Minister to Zia's number two, who assumed the office of President after Zia-ul-Haq was killed. One of the men she appointed as Governor of Sindh had signed her father's death warrant.

Karan Thapar: Do you also suspect that she saw your father as a political challenge? She didn't want to share power with him. She wanted to be Bhutto's heir. She didn't want the Bhutto's son to come back and enjoy the limelight, the power or the legacy with her.

Fatima Bhutto: Certainly. I think she didn't want another Bhutto to say why these compromises have been made on the blood of our father.

Karan Thapar: So neither did she wanted to share power nor did she want her brother to question what she was doing?

Fatima Bhutto: Yes.

Karan Thapar: Five years later in 1993 when he decided that he would return and contest elections--and these were the elections that were going to bring Benazir back to power for the second time as Prime Minister, he asked her for a seat, and she refused.

Fatima Bhutto: Yes. She refused him a seat. In fact, the seat he wanted a seat in Larkana that his father had run from, that my grandmother had run from. Benazir then gave a new entry into the party to a man who had publicly welcomed General Zia-ul-Haq in Larkana and presented him with an Azak on his first visit to the city.

Karan Thapar: So the family seat at Larkana was denied to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's son and heir and given in fact to someone quite different, someone you described in your book as Zardari crony.

Fatima Bhutto: A Zardari crony and a Zia crony as it would seem.

Karan Thapar: So in family's eyes it is the ultimate betrayal?

Fatima Bhutto: Not only an ultimate betrayal but the very reluctance of Benazir to allow her brother who had been a member of the party since it had been founded, a single party ticket shows her fear and how threatened she felt.

Karan Thapar: And deeply hurtful.

Fatima Bhutto: Deeply hurtful. All that he wanted was a ticket. He should have been allowed a chance to contest.

Karan Thapar: Your father did return in 1993. At the airport itself he was arrested and jailed for the rest eight months. You were eleven at that time and in your book you recount how you set a sort of challenge to your aunt. You said to her: if you are being honest and have nothing to do with his bad treatment, come and see him with us in jail tomorrow. What response did you get?

Fatima Bhutto: When he was jailed, I asked my aunt, who at that time had protested her innocence to come and visit him, and she told me that she would arrange something. And as the hours ticked by and it was clear that she was not getting back to me, I began to call her as I genuinely believed that she could be behind all this. And she said: I am sorry, I can't come and visit Mir with you in jail because I haven't been able to get permission from the jail superintendent.

Karan Thapar: The Prime Minister couldn't get permission from the jail superintendent to visit her brother?

Fatima Bhutto: That's what I said. I said: you are the Prime Minister. She said well I can't get it so I can't come. It was clear then that she did not want to see her brother.

Karan Thapar: During that period when your father was in jails, specifically on the 5th of January 1994 which happens to be your grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's birth anniversary, Benazir actually stopped her mother, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's widow from going to his grave because she felt that her mother was siding with her brother Murtaza and not her.

Fatima Bhutto: And that my father Murtaza's supporters would be accompanying my grandmother; that it would be a show of strength for her brother who had never visited his father's grave at that point. And again, we saw that our house at Larkana, the house was surrounded by police. People were locked; people were prevented from leaving the house. And eventually the police fired on the house. We still have the bullet marks on the gate.

Karan Thapar: In fact, you write that the bullets just missed your grandmother Nusrat Bhutto.

Fatima Bhutto: A man stood in front of her. He was shot and he died later on that day.

Karan Thapar: Later your grandmother rang Benazir and asked why that had happened. And she was actually told that the Indian RAW agents had infiltrated the family home Al-Murtaza.

Fatima Bhutto: Yes

Karan Thapar: Did you believe?

Fatima Bhutto: I don't think anybody believed that. There was an incredible show of state police and security forces in Larkana. We had to prevent my family and my father's supporters from having their presence known. So, when there are thousands of policemen crawling all over Larkana, how did RAW agents manage to slip through this dragnet, as my father called it, of federal security office. It was ludicrous.

Karan Thapar: You book also tells an account of the mysterious and so far unexplained death of you younger uncle Shahnawaz. Benazir's younger brother in Nice in 1985. Years later you interviewed the renowned French lawyer Jacques Verges, who was retained by the family in 1985, and he sort of suggested you that Benazir had a role complicit to Shahnawaz's death. Did you believe?

Fatima Bhutto: Well it was shocking to hear and certainly not just Jacques Verges, but Shahnawaz's daughter Sassi raised some questions that were very disturbing. It was a year after Shahnawaz's murder that Benazir began to negotiate with the military. The same military she believed was responsible for Shahnawaz's murder. She was reluctant to let Jacques Verges take the case as forward as he liked. He wanted to bring in to question Pakistani security agencies; the CIA, and their possible role in the murder. And Benazir forbade it.

Karan Thapar: In fact, you quote Jacques verges in your book. He says: in her mind, with her two brothers, what her two brothers were doing wasn't helping her. Among the two brothers, the strongest brother was Mir. Perhaps it was necessary to get Shah out of the way because he was the weaker one.

Fatima Bhutto: Yes.

Karan Thapar: She got Shah out of the way?

Fatima Bhutto: Again this is what's the disturbing questions that he raised in that meeting. Shahnawaz and Murtaza were both very opposed to American influence in Pakistan. They were bitterly opposed to the American influence in Pakistan's politics. And at that point of time, Benazir was seeking, as Jacques Verges supposed, an entry into the establishment.

Karan Thapar: So she needed to get opposition out of her way. In fact, opposition was her brother, but she had to get him out of the way.

Fatima Bhutto: It's a possibility.

Karan Thapar: Your aunt had a role to play in the death of both her brothers and maybe she was even complicit. Can you really, as a niece accept that she is responsible in some way for the death of both of them?

Fatima Bhutto: In terms of my father's murder, I spent years researching this issue. I spoke to witnesses, police, survivours. In that there is no doubt in my mind. In terms of her younger brother Shahnawaz's death, this is a possibility. According to Jacques Verges who represented the family, according to Shahnawaz's family, it is a possibility.

Karan Thapar: And neither of them would say this lightly?

Fatima Bhutto: What all sides say is that there were certain questions that have never been answered. And while Benazir was alive, she refused to engage in those questions. Why?

Karan Thapar: The portrait that emerges of Benazir from your book, of not just of a calculating, cold, unfeeling woman, but to be honest, a person who is capable of great brutality and maybe if I can support it, even a person of great evil. Do you really need to paint such a terrible portrait.

Fatima Bhutto: I think Benazir was a very complex person to me. There was also a time when she was my favourite aunt. She was a very complex person but I think, in answer to your question, perhaps this is the nature of the beast. I think power is an overwhelming, transformative, and very often, a destructive force. And Benazir was not immune to its power.

Karan Thapar: Something that emerges is that the closer Benazir came to power, the more she became cruel and ambitious, and more distant she became from her family and her brothers. Did power corrupt and rule her?

Fatima Bhutto: It certainly seems that way. My memories of her as a woman struggling against power are incredibly different from the woman she was when she was in power.

Karan Thapar: She was your devoted aunt when you were a child. Today when you look back at the Benazir Bhutto you discovered through your research, the Benazir Bhutto you know of who failed to help when your father was dying. How do you think of her today?

Fatima Bhutto: It's very complicated. I can't think of her except as the two sides. I can't see her alone as one. While she was out of power, she was a woman who faced great suffering, who was incredibly vulnerable and brave. But, on the other hand, when she was in power, she inflicted much of the suffering that she endured on thousands of people.

Karan Thapar: Without realising that this was paradoxical and ironic?

Fatima Bhutto: Certainly she did not comment on its paradoxical nature.

Karan Thapar: Is there a bit of you that still loves her today?

Fatima Bhutto: Of course. There is a bit of me that remembers that young woman who use to read me bedtime stories and who I felt safe around. But there is still a part of me that is very frightened of her.

Karan Thapar: Is there a part of you that now hates her?

Fatima Bhutto: I think hate and anger are incredibly violent emotions and if you allow them to take over, they destroy you too. And I don't want to give them the powers to do that. No, I don't hate her.

Karan Thapar: The Bhutto family is a large family. You have many cousins, aunts. They would all have read this book. How do they respond to the portrait that you have painted of Benazir?

Fatima Bhutto: Unfortunately, it's not that larger family anymore. I am not in touch with them. One would have to ask them to know.

Karan Thapar: Do you have any idea how Sanam's children or Benazir's children, your own first cousins would respond?

Fatima Bhutto: No. And to be very honest, they have experienced a very different side of her. I think they benefitted greatly when she was in power.

Karan Thapar: Do you think, in a way, by writing this book you have shared with the world, the agony and pain that you have gone through. But as a result of it, you have shut the door between you and your cousins.

Fatima Bhutto: That door was shut a long time ago.

Karan Thapar: Do you regret that?

Fatima Bhutto: No.

Karan Thapar: So does that mean that Fatima Bhutto is a Bhutto on her own?

Fatima Bhutto: It certainly has felt like that for the last fourteen years. We have been denied access to our grandmother repeatedly. After my father's death, it was like we lost his entire family. My aunt filed cases against my brother Zulfikar and I when we were children. When Zulfikar was nine, my aunt filed case against him. So, I think we lost them a long time ago.

Karan Thapar: So it's Fatima on her own?

Fatima Bhutto: Yes.

Karan Thapar: Fatima Bhutto, a pleasure talking to you.

Fatima Bhutto: Thank you for having me.

Source : http://ibnlive.in.com/news/benazir-agreed-to-be-pm-under-zia-fatima/112640-37.html