ISLAMABAD: The lawyer of former president retired General Pervez Musharraf thinks the general is inching closer to his acquittal in the Benazir Bhutto murder case as the prosecution is struggling to produce the last witness against him.
While the prosecution’s case against Musharraf was based on four witnesses, in the previous week the prosecution has already dropped one of them Ejaz Shah, the former chief of the Intelligence Bureau.
The former president was implicated in the Bhutto murder case in 2010. The prosecution’s case against him was based on the statements of the four witnesses.
These were: former interior secretary Syed Kamal Shah; former director general of the National Crisis Management Cell (NCMC) retired Brig Javed Iqbal Cheema; former IB director general retired Brig Ejaz Shah; and the US lobbyist Mark Siegel.
Of these four, two Kamal Shah and Cheema had recorded their statements before the anti-terrorism court in January this year.
However, the statements were recorded in camera and have not been made public. Both of these former aides to Musharraf had been presented as prosecution witnesses.
Advocate Ilyas Siddiqui, who is representing Musharraf, claims that both Shah and Cheema did not utter a single word against their former boss, Musharraf, in their testimonies.
“They disowned the statements attributed to them by the FIA,” he said, adding: “The prosecution could declare them hostile witnesses but it didn’t.”
A hostile witness is one who is not willing to cooperate with the prosecution and has to be grilled and cross-examined aggressively.
But surprisingly, even before Ejaz Shah was due to record his statement before the ATC his name was dropped as the prosecution said his testimony was no longer required.
He was scheduled to record his statement during the second week of July.
Though the prosecution did not provide more details about its ‘change of heart’, the joint investigation report prepared back in April 2011 by the FIA quoted the former IB chief and his remarks could be seen to be damaging to Musharraf.
According to that report, he “corroborated” or confirmed the statement of Cheema.
The report claimed that Cheema had told the JIT that he had held a press conference in which he told the media that Bhutto died because she had hit her head on the lever of the vehicle’s sunroof.
He had also told them that the press conference was held under Musharraf’s instructions.
According to the report, the allegation [levelled by Cheema] against Musharraf “has also been corroborated by Brig (retired) Ejaz Shah, former DG, IB, in his statement to the JIT.
Needless to emphasise here that the former president ordered this hasty press conference with the motive to influence subsequent police investigation”.
Internews
