” Gen Akhtar had not planned to attend the demonstration. But on the late afternoon of August 16, a trusted subordinate conferred with Akhtar in his quarters. Akthar phoned Zia to say he had just acquired vital information. Zia told the general to brief him during flight the next day. Thus what Akhtar was told by his aide put him aboard the president aircraft on the morning of August 17. ”

” Board of inquiry found no evidence that human error or technical failure caused the crash and concluded that crash “most probably was caused by a criminal act or sabotage “. Its summery stated:” A chemical agent may have been used to cause incapacitation of the flight crew. ”

” U.S law authorizes FBI counter terrorism specialists to investigate terrorist acts against Americans abroad and FBI immediately prepared to dispatch a team to Pakistan. On August 21, the State Department verbally granted clearance, but within hours, revoked it on the basis of” additional considerations “.

” Pakistan literally buried buried potentially critical evidence. Some bodies recovered from the crash, including those of the flight crew, were substantially intact. “

JOHN BARRON

” A thorough and credible investigation has never been conducted. Gen Akhtar’s ISI biographer , Br Yousaf , concluded that ” the KGB or Khad ( its Afghan counterpart ) had been involved , but the Americans were eager to see Zia killed now that the jihad was almost over . ”. John Gunther Dean, then the U.S ambassador to India, accused the Israeli secret service, Mossad , of killing Zia , possibly to stop the Pakistan bomb programmer . In the most recent study , based on the interviews with many of Pakistani air force officers , who investigated the crash , Shuja Nawaz concludes that ” many questions still remain ” about why the plane crashed and why the investigation of the crash was so incomplete . Like much else in Pakistan’s history this incident remains a mystery. “

Bruce Riedel

” One year before the Bahawalpur incident, a young Pakistani man met an American journalist carrying photographs of injured Afghan children with General Akhtar Abdul Rehman. The Pakistani asked the journalist the reason for keeping these photographs and he answered that whenever he was disappointed he looked at the photographs of the general and the children, to get courage.  Today, the US and Western analysts and experts admit that the DG ISI, CJCOSC and right hand of General Zia ul Haq, General Akhtar Abdul Rehman was the man who forced the superpower ‘Soviet Union’ to be torn into pieces. For the first time in history the mason of a great victory was known by the world after his death. “

Mariam Shah