|
Bugti buried without family
consent
WSN News
 DERA
BUGTI: Pakistani authorities on Friday buried a locked coffin
believed to contain the body of a tribal chief whose killing in a
military raid sparked widespread protests, officials and witnesses
said.
The chief ’s family did not give permission for the burial and said
they have not seen proof of the leader’s death. The son of Nawab
Akbar Bugti, the ethnic Baloch militia leader who was killed last
weekend, accused the government of defying the family’s wishes and
quietly burying him in a place where it was unlikely to spark
anti-government protests.
A plywood box sealed by two Chinese-made locks put into a graveyard
hole in the southwestern Balochistan town of Dera Bugti contained
Bugti’s body, said Abdul Samad Lasi, the area’s top government
official. Only 20 people, including government officials and Dera
Bugti community leaders, attended the burial. Several dozen heavily
armed security forces deployed outside the cemetery.
Journalists at the graveyard demanded that the coffin be opened so
they could see Bugti’s body. But Lasi refused, telling reporters it
is “illegal to show his face” and that he and a local Islamic cleric
had earlier viewed the body and confirmed it to be Bugti’s. “The
body was badly decomposed. It was not in a condition to have been
shown,” Lasi said after a short graveside prayer service was held.
“But I and the cleric saw it and recognised it to be of Nawab Bugti.”
The Pakistani army announced that soldiers late on Thursday had
retrieved the body of Bugti, which they said had been pinned under a
boulder that fell on the 79-year-old renegade tribal chief following
an unexplained explosion in his mountain cave hideout, which came
under military attack on Saturday.
In the Baluchistan capital, Quetta, Bugti’s son, Jamil, accused
Pakistan’s military of taking his father’s body to Dera Bugti
against the wishes of his family, who wanted to bury his body in
Quetta. “The government is scared the people will show their anger
if my father is allowed to be buried in Quetta,” Jamil Bugti said
over telephone. Abdul Raziq Bugti, spokesman for the regional
Baluchistan government, said the decision to not hand the body was
made to prevent political parties opposed to Pakistan’s president
Pervez Musharraf, from using an emotional funeral for their own
“political objectives”.
6 September 2006
|
Read Also