Benazir Bhutto.
To even the least experienced eye the case has not been pursued with due diligence, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that there have been sustained and ultimately successful attempts to thwart any disclosure of what actually led to the assassination, who was responsible for the planning and equally who was responsible for the tightly crafted cover up — the verdict being the culmination thereof. Two policemen who are unlikely to have been anything other than pawns in the bigger game find themselves facing long prison sentences, their careers effectively over. They may or may not have been guilty of dereliction of duty, have failed in any number of procedural matters — but they are most unlikely to have been the motive power behind the most high-profile political assassination for decades.
An ex-military dictator is now a proclaimed offender and it is entirely possible that more than one skilled and dangerous terrorist has been recycled back into the mill. In every conceivable understanding of the phrase there has been a miscarriage of justice. Any number of people wanted to see Benazir Bhutto dead. There had already been an unsuccessful attempt to kill her in Karachi and by any standards she was a marked woman. That she chose to ignore the advice of her security detail and show herself above the armoured capsule she was travelling in ultimately led to her death. Her assassins were banking on her bravado. They were not wrong. It is unlikely that the truth of the affair will ever be publicly known, but those that know the truth are probably alive and well and satisfied with the outcome. Justice has not been served, and Pakistan has yet another black mark chalked against it.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 2nd, 2017.
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