Aboard the Democracy Train (23 page)

But such words have become irrelevant in a society mired in corruption. Unable to “sell justice” to the aggrieved party, the judge turned a deaf ear to the eloquent arguments raised by Javed’s lawyer about the heinous nature of the crime. Instead, he granted Jamali bail and enabled him to be released a few months later.

What had transpired between the judge and the accused? It was anyone’s guess. Once in a while, the anti-corruption task force
would mark hundred rupee notes and catch a judge red-handed accepting a bribe. But as the popular Pakistani saying goes,

“He was caught accepting a bribe and released giving a bribe.”

Still, in the two years that Jamali was in prison, the world outside had changed. Political parties treated him as a pariah. In 1993, as the PPP began awarding tickets to candidates, it refused to give him a ticket for the second time. Newspapers refused to publish his statements. Society treated him as a common criminal.

Married to Fauzia’s brother, I voluntarily stopped covering the trial. I knew it was not right to cover a trial in which I was emotionally invested. My editors seemed to think so too and reassigned the case to another male reporter.

Lengthy court delays gave the defense enough time to work on their witnesses. As expected, the driver Ishaq – the only eyewitness to the murder – reneged on his testimony to the magistrate. I had seen the scared look in the scrawny fellow when I questioned him point-blank in his hometown in the early days after the murder. Now, as Ishaq came to court, slinking into Jamali’s shadow, he avoided meeting the gaze of the activists. Predictably, he told the court he had seen “Nothing.”

Hope finally arrived five years into the trial in the form of a Muslim cleric from Nawabshah, Maulvi Faiz Mohammed Sahto. The elderly, white-bearded cleric told the court that he had been horrified to discover through the newspapers that Fauzia was already dead on the date he had performed her marriage in absentia to Jamali.

Apparently, the innocuous paragraph I had inserted in
Dawn
on January 12, 1990 – linking Jamali to Fauzia – had pushed the accused toward the marriage. Petrified that I had referred to Fauzia as his “girl friend,” Jamali had, after my news item, contacted the Muslim cleric and given the impression that he was marrying Fauzia in absentia.

Maulvi Sahto testified in court that Jamali had tricked him into preparing a fake marriage document. He testified there was a discrepancy in the marriage dates. The cleric’s official records showed that the accused had contracted the fake marriage after Fauzia’s murder but forced the registrar’s office to back date the marriage certificate. A handwriting expert brought into court confirmed that Fauzia’s signature had been forged on the marriage document.

The humble cleric’s insistence on speaking the truth in court was an affront to the influential and well-connected Jamali. The accused had managed to get several adjournments to prevent the cleric from testifying. He even sent his men to the Nawabshah mosque, where the cleric led the prayers of the male congregation. There, the cleric said he had been alternately cajoled and threatened against testifying.

Even under these threats, Maulvi Sahto made numerous trips to Karachi. After a year of adjournments, he finally testified against Jamali. The testimony obviously lifted a big weight from the conscience of a deeply religious man. It also kept alive the spark of hope among activists fighting for justice in the Fauzia Bhutto murder case.

In January 1996, office-bearers of the Pakistan Medical Association nominated Maulvi Faiz Mohammed Sahto for the Sughra Rababi human rights award – instituted in the name of a late woman artist. Large numbers of people came to the PMA House in Karachi to applaud the presentation of the award by a former Supreme Court judge and Chairman Emeritus of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, late Justice Dorab Patel to the humble but upright Muslim cleric.

But four years of repeated court delays wearied the special public prosecutor and caused him to withdraw. The trial would now be conducted by poorly qualified government prosecutors. At times, Javed walked into the office of the state public prosecutor and found the accused sharing cups of tea with those appointed to try him.

As the case proceeded, a piece of the bloodstained carpet – recovered from the apartment used by Jamali – mysteriously
disappeared from the storage rooms of the court. That had been a key part of the evidence. Earlier, the laboratory report presented to the court had confirmed that the blood on the carpet matched the bloodstains on Fauzia’s clothes at the time her body was found.

A number of district level judges heard the Fauzia Bhutto case. In more than one instance, Jamali appeared to have won them over. At times, he was the only one invited into the judges’ chambers while everyone else waited outside the courtroom.

The accused also maneuvered the law department to block the appointment of another special public prosecutor. It became another uphill battle for the Citizens Police Liaison Committee to coordinate with the women and human rights groups to get their nominee, Shaukat Hayat appointed as the prosecutor.

But 14 years of repeated court adjournments would give the accused ample time to tamper with the evidence. In June 2004, additional district and sessions judge in Karachi East, Nadeem Ahmed Akhund ruled that there was “insufficient evidence” against Jamali and acquitted him along with his driver.

In December 2004, human rights activists pressured the Sindh government to appeal against the judgment. The state filed a case in the high court, challenging the lower court’s acquittal. But the high court upheld the lower court’s judgement and dismissed their appeal.

Fauzia’s murder was a devastating blow for the family. Years later, the victim’s mother still weeps, remembering how she would wait by the door for the train to bring her daughter home to Shikarpur for the holidays. Fauzia’s sister, Sofia – two years her junior – her eyes a deep well of tears, wanted to know, “Why, why would anyone want to murder my dearest sister?”

These are the questions that victims in Pakistan ask from a legal system that has practically collapsed. When Fauzia first disappeared, it was she who was judged for being young and unmarried. It was a Herculean battle to chase the Machiavellian
assembly member of the PPP and force the politicians, bureaucracy, police and judiciary to take note of the heinous crime.

Today, if there is any comfort for the family, it is that Jamali has been discredited in the court of public opinion. In 1998, the Sindhi press carried the dramatic news that Jamali’s son had committed suicide. The response was predictable: there were many in the community who called the incident an “act of God” and “
Makafat-i-Amal
” – the Persian term for “What goes around, comes around.”

In the small towns of Sindh, speculation was rife that it had been difficult for a young man to live with a father who had the reputation of a murderer. The irony of it all was that the son had used his father’s gun to kill himself.

Today, Fauzia’s murder is an example of the criminalization of politics in Pakistan: a masterful manipulator within the ruling party who exploited the corrupt system to roam free in society. It has also exposed the weak judiciary in Pakistan, where money and influence allow the corrupt to buy their way out of punishment.

On the other hand, late Fauzia Bhutto’s case is symbolic of the power of the people, which rose above government weakness and a broken legal system and obtained a semblance of justice.

It was 9.15am on September 11, 2001 when the phone rang. There was a strange urgency to the ring. It made me spring out of bed in my tiny apartment in Sunderland, Western Massachusetts and run to the other room to quiet it.

It was my relative, Shabnam, who had left Pakistan decades ago and lived in Houston, Texas. In the instances when we met on either side of the globe, I shared with her my adventures as a journalist. Given our mutual background, she reveled in the exciting stories I told her as a reporter for the nation’s leading newspaper.

Evidently, she knew me well enough to sense that this day – a day that changed the US – would change my life as well.

“Quick, turn on the television,” she said.

Alas, I told her, we didn’t have a television. My husband and I lived in a one-bedroom apartment and had only the sparse belongings of new immigrants. We had arrived about a year ago
from Pakistan and I had just finished teaching a course at the Women Studies Department in Amherst College, Massachusetts on gender politics in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“The trade towers in New York are burning. They say it was hit by an airplane,” she was saying.

Sensing it was a terrorist act, I rushed to turn on the radio. I was immediately drawn into the drama unfolding in downtown Manhattan, where I had worked as a journalist for two years during the 1980s.

National Public Radio
contributor, Ginger Miles, whose apartment overlooked the World Trade Towers, was on air. I knew Ginger from my reporting at
WBAI
radio in New York. There was unmistakable excitement in her voice, sounding like journalists do when they inadvertently turn into part of the story. Ginger fought her way through the smoke and debris blowing in through her windows as she spoke. Her commentary about thick ash, which blew into her apartment from the collapsing trade towers, conjured up vivid images of the attack into the heart of capitalism.

My mind flashed back to 1993, when I had visited the US from Pakistan. Then, I had stood on the balcony of a British writer’s high-rise apartment near the UN building in New York, which faced the World Trade Towers. Arms outstretched, Jan Goodwin had dramatically described it as the site where an Al Qaeda operative Ramzi Yusuf, linked with militant terrorist groups in Pakistan, made the first unsuccessful attempt to bring down the towers.

On the day that would come to be known as 9/11, as the fall colors enveloped the picturesque Amherst valley, the radio reported that thick, billowing smoke had enveloped the World Trade Towers and the towers had begun to collapse. People trapped inside faced the horrifying choice of being burnt alive or jumping to meet a faster death.

At Amherst center, bewildered American students milled around in a candle light rally to show solidarity with the families of the victims. Many of the students who subsequently enrolled in the post-9/11 course I taught at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst told me that they had joined to learn the facts that were kept secret from them by the US government, and which had resulted in such a terrifying and heartless attack on their soil.

Knowing the longstanding relationship between the US government and the Islamic militants in my region, it was clear to me that the finger of guilt would point to Pakistan and its neighbors.

I had left Pakistan just as the primordial Taliban fastened their tentacles around it. In 1999,
Dawn
had published my investigative report on the terror links between militants who bombed the US embassies in Africa and the Pakistan’s north-west region. In that front-page report, I wrote that the militants were foreigners who traveled to Kenya and Tanzania through Karachi, using fake passports and Pakistani identities.

It was a time when the tail had begun to wag the dog. The Taliban had taken over Afghanistan in 1996 and were spreading in Pakistan. Shortly before I left for the US in 2000, the sectarian Anjuman Sipah Sahaba Pakistan (ASSP) – which translates as “Army of the Friends of the Prophet” – had shut down Karachi after an Islamic scholar, Maulana Mohammed Yusuf Ludhianvi and his driver were killed by rivals near the Binori Town mosque.

In early 2001, I taught at the secluded Amherst College with a sense of despair at the “Talibanization” of Pakistan. I was making my first break from reporting and it was an uphill task to explain its stormy cross-currents to my small class of mostly elite American students. The region’s politics felt even more remote in the snow-covered hills and valleys of the Five College area.

After the semester ended, I moved a few yards down the road to work for the
WFCR
radio. The station was affiliated with the National Public Radio. My co-workers eyed me curiously and with an element of surprise because of my passion for coverage of the Pak-Afghan region. Occasionally, I overheard them mumble that scarce dollars were being squandered to cover my unusual interests.

As public funding was a big issue, it became harder to commission reports on my region. Only days before the 9/11 attacks, I had with difficulty convinced my program director
to allow me to report on the Taliban’s kidnapping of foreign Christian aid workers in Afghanistan. It grew harder to secure funds for such foreign programming since the audiences were a select group with esoteric interests.

And then the biggest attack on US soil in recent history occurred – and changed the direction of my life. Suddenly my telephone rang off the hook. Radio stations interviewed me on my cell phone. Television stations sent chauffeured limousines to interview me. Newspapers reporters arrived for interviews at my campus office. I spoke at impromptu meetings, seminars and question and answer sessions – organized by teachers and students in both the Five College and Boston areas – on why America had been attacked.

All of a sudden, people hung on to every word I said about the Taliban and growing Islamic fundamentalism in my region.

“Why do they hate us?” was the common refrain I heard all around me.

My mind was captivated by the image of powerful stones breaking through America’s formidable ivory towers – and leaving massive debris all around.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington DC – which provoked the US government to overthrow the Taliban government in Afghanistan – were for me a powerful reminder that the explosive situation building in my region had boomeranged to the world’s super power.