Detailed look at Zia’s last hours

Press, 24 August 1988, Page 13

Detailed look at Zia’s last hours

NZPA-Reuter Bahanalpur Pakistani investigators are trying to reconstruct a detailed picture of President Muhammad Zia ul-Haq’s last hours to solve the riddle of the air crash that killed him.

Administrative and police sources said yesterday the authorities, who suspect sabotage, want to know more than the results of the technical examination being conducted into the wreck of President Zia’s Cl 30 Hercules. Investigators are also seeking information on all aspects of his activities on the day of the crash to help identify possible suspects. The 64-year-old leader was killed when his plane plunged into the desert seven, minutes after taking off from Bahawalpur, eastern Pakistan, for Islamabad. All 30 people on board, including a string of senior Army officers and the United States Ambassador, Arnold Raphel, were killed. They had flown unannounced to Bahawalpur earlier in the day to see a demonstration of the United States Abrams Ml battle tank, which Washington wants Pakistan to buy. The sources said interrogations have centred on whether word of the private visit had leaked and, if so, who was responsible. Investigators have carried out questioning throughout the country and more than 700 people, including Army staff, have made statements. Investigators have tried to assemble a o minute-by-minute account of the doomed flight by making a “duplicate” journey in a Cl3O on its flight path. It is not known whether the plane carried a flight recorder. m.q About 2(r"United States aviation experts have worked at the crash site since Monday, examining the-rharred wreckage. o o A retired Army office? said investigatfffs were @terrogatl3g ) ss soldiers of the 22nd Artillery-Company who guarded the plane, and an unspecified number of Air Force personnel who serviced it during its stay at Bahawalpur.

The former major, who served in the 22nd Artillery, declined to be identified. No immediate confirmation was available from the military, which has banned journalists from talking to staff of the joint Pakistani-United States inquiry. In unrest provoked by the violent end to President Zia’s 11-year rule, nine people were killed and 10 wounded in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal areas when Sunni Muslims armed with automatic rifles clashed with rival anti-Zia Shi’ites. Officials said the Sunnis, the Muslim sect to which President Zia belonged, were enraged by Shi’ite celebrations of his death.