Murtaza Bhutto - 1981 PIA Hijacked

1981 PIA Hijacked

Al-Zulfiqar hijacked a Pakistan International Airlines flight en route to Peshawar from Karachi, and diverted it to Kabul in March 1981. The hijacking went on for thirteen days, during which Lieutenant Tariq Rahim was shot to death; the hijackers mistakenly believed Rahim to be the son of General Rahimuddin Khan. Rahim was executed following Murtaza's conferring with Afghan Intelligence (KHAD) chief Mohammad Najibullah. The execution forced the Zia regime to accept the demands of the hijackers, releasing dozens of Pakistan Peoples Party and other leftist political prisoners languishing in Pakistani jails.

In 2003 the case against Murtaza Bhutto and his brother was concluded quietly absolving them from blame relating to the PIA Hijacking, according to Fatima Bhutto's Book - Song's of Blood and Sword. In the book, she indicates that the actual leader of the hijacking was Salamullah Tipu. Tipu had attempted to join the AZO in Kabul, but was rejected as the AZO supposedly never accepted those that came to them (in what was to be a futile effort to prevent infiltration). Murtaza Bhutto was supposedly only to hear about the hijacking when Tipu called him in Afghanistan from the Hijacked aircraft.

Contrary to this, Raja Anwar in his book 'The Terrorist Prince' paints a negative picture of Murtaza Bhutto. He writes that the idea to hijack a plane came from Murtaza Bhutto himself, who was 'obsessed' about the tactic after the Palestinians resorted to it in the seventies and eighties. Anwar tells of an excited Murtaza who, while he had early advised Tipu on taking the aircraft to Damascus or Tripoli went into pragmatic overdrive once the plane landed in Kabul due to a shortage of fuel. Anwar, after detailed conversations with Salamullah Tipu, which he recounts in his book tells of the role Najibullah played along with Murtaza in directing the hijack from the Kabul airport control tower. Raja says that while the hijackers had arrived into Kabul with only revolvers, they were soon furnished with semi-automatic weapons after Murtaza's successive meetings with Tipu under the 'belly of the PIA aircraft'. The most compelling account from 'The Terrorist Prince' tell of the treatment meted out to Major Tariq Rahim, who was ADC to Murtaza's father Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Raja Anwar recounts the successive pleas (in the form of notes written on torn pieces of newspaper) Tariq Rahim made to Murtaza and Shahnawaz (Murtaza's younger brother) on account of his association with Zulfiqar Bhutto. These pleas according to one of the hijackers were delivered to Murtaza Bhutto, who not only discarded them, but instead instructed Salamullah Tipu to execute Tariq Rahim.

The books tells of countless stories of many activists who became fodder for Murtaza Bhutto in his quest to seek revenge for his father's judicial murder at the hands of General Zia-ul-Haq.