Bhutto’s murder was planned much earlier:

Senior lawyer Hafeez Lakho, a close friend and an advocate of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in his case, on Saturday revealed that Bhutto’s killing had been planned long before his judicial murder.

Speaking at a seminar organised by the PPP at the Arts Council of Pakistan, Lakho said Bhutto was given two options — leave the country and remove Begum Nusrat Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto from the PPP’s leadership. “However, he rejected both of them.”

He recalled when a movement had started against Bhutto, one of his cabinet ministers, Rafi Raza, who once practiced law along with Lakho, told him that he had been constantly trying to persuade Bhutto to abandon politics and leave the country. “Rafi had come to know that a plan had been hatched to remove Bhutto from the scene and if he (Bhutto) did not leave the country, the ambitious generals would kill him.”

The senior advocate said he did not want to discuss the perceived flaws in the murder case against Bhutto but it was a fact that a judicial commission led by Justice Shafi Rehman to probe the killing of Kasuri was formed in 1974. The commission had given its findings on February 26, 1975, stating that there was no incriminating evidence in the case. No one including the deceased’s son, Raza Kasuri, had challenged the findings of the report.

But when martial law was imposed on July 5, 1977, the Kasuri murder case was secretly reopened on July 27.

“Masood Mehmood, who had said on record that he had personal enmity with the Kasuris, surprisingly became a witness in the murder case.”

He said if the Supreme Court would hear the reference case recently filed by the president, many facts would come on surface. “Though people term Bhutto’s hanging judicial murder, the man himself used the word assassination in his book ‘If I am assassinated’.”

Lakho said Dr Justice (retd) Nasim Hasan Shah — one of the judges of the four-member bench of the Supreme Court that had awarded death sentence to Bhutto — had publicly said recently that the judgment was given under duress.
 
Federal minister and the head of the 18th Amendment Implementation Committee Senator Mian Raza Rabbani alleged that the establishment. in connivance with centrist and rightist parties, was conspiring against the PPP-led government.
 
He believed that the reference would rectify the historic wrong. Rabbani cited several reasons behind the killing of Bhutto ranging from his efforts to unite the Muslim countries to initiating the nuclear programme.
Chief Minister Sindh, Syed Qaim Ali Shah said Bhutto believed in the politics of consensus and consultation which was evident from the fact that he initiated a dialogue process for the 1973 Constitution with opposition parties having only 35 MNAs.