Key ZAB case witness was dumped by prosecution

Ansar Abbasi:
ISLAMABAD: A vital prosecution witness in the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto case, the then Resident Magistrate of Islamabad who had recorded the initial confessional statement of the much condemned approver, was given up by the prosecution after Masood Mahmood had recorded his second statement, became an approver and played a vital role in the hanging of the first elected Prime Minister of Pakistan.

While the prosecution had mala fide intentions, the defence team led by Yahya Bakhtiar too behaved in a strange manner by not asking the court to summon the defence witness, the Resident Magistrate Islamabad Ghazanfar Zia, who had recorded the confessional statement of Masood Mahmood within days after his arrest in 1977.

Ghazanfar Zia, an old man and presently associated with the Punjab Ombudsman office in Rawalpindi, did not remember what was contained in the 18-page confessional statement but a source, who was holding an important position in the Rawalpindi administration during those days, claimed that Masood Mahmood, in his initial confessional statement, did not utter a word about the involvement of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Nawab Muhammad Ahmad Khan's murder. He believed that everything was cooked up later and included in his second confessional statement.

Ghazanfar Zia, who recorded the confession of Mahmood at G-6/4 courtroom under Sections 164 and 342 of Cr.P.C, when asked said that he did not remember what Masood Mahmood had stated. Zia also did not recall if Bhutto's name was mentioned in what he remembered to be an 18-page confessional statement.

Zia said that later another confessional statement of Masood Mahmood was recorded by a magistrate in Lahore. He did not know precisely how different was the second statement from the first one but believed that in the second confessional statement, Masood Mahmood emerged as an approver against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He, however, confirmed that he was given up as a prosecution witness for reasons not known to him.

Although, Ghazanfar Zia could not recall the contents of Masood Mahmood's first confessional statement, one of his seniors in the civil administration during those days said that as per the strength of his memory, the original confessional statement did not talk of any conspiracy involving Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

He, on condition of not being named, said that though he did not go through the confessional statement recorded by the Resident Magistrate, the briefing that he had received did not even a mention of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Masood Mahmood was arrested in Abbotabad by the FIA and was brought before the then Additional Deputy Commissioner Rawalpindi, who had asked for recording of his confessional statement by the Resident Magistrate, Islamabad.

According to the source, Masood Mahmood, who was the chief of the Federal Security Force raised by Bhutto, in his first confessional statement before the RM, talked of many crimes that he had committed. The source, without being sure if this all was included in the original confessional statement, said that Mahmood was also involved in the murderous attack on actor Muhammad Ali in Gujar Khan.

The source disclosed that it was also said during those days that Masood Mahmood, who after his dirty role in the execution of ZAB, had later left Pakistan and had settled in the USA, had some personal family feud with the Kasuris.

The source said that Ghazanfar Zia's evidence and the original confession of Masood Mahmood recorded in September 1997 was the key material that was sidestepped and not even pressed by the defence team. The source believes that Masood Mahmood's original confessional statement would be part of the LHC case file, a copy of which is now being provided to the federal law ministry.

The source said it is important to probe why Ghazanfar Zia was given up by the prosecution as a prosecution witness and what was the reason that the defence team did not summon him as its witness or as a court witness.

After a few months of his confessional statement, Masood Mahmood gave his second confessional statement reportedly before a Lahore Magistrate and emerged as an approver against ZAB.

The ZAB's conviction was unique for the reason that he was sent to gallows on the mere statement of an approver and without any other evidence. The then Deputy Commissioner, Rawalpindi, Saeed Mehdi, when approached said that it was made a criminal conspiracy case without any evidence that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had ordered the assassination.

Talking to The News, he said that even Masood Mahmood had not said that ZAB directly told him to murder Nawab Ahmad Khan but had claimed that his predecessor in the FSF, Haq Nawaz Tawana, had told him that Bhutto wanted the assassination. Saeed Mehdi, when asked about Masood Mahmood's first confessional statement, said neither had he read it nor he could recall what it said.