ISLAMABAD: The federal government filed an application to the district magistrate of Islamabad on Friday for a copy of a decades-old confessional statement of Masood Mahmood, a former top security official, who had become an approver in the controversial conspiracy-to-murder conviction of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.The move is related to a reference sent by President Asif Ali Zardari to the Supreme Court on Saturday seeking its opinion on revisiting the 1979 conviction, which the ruling PPP says led to the “judicial murder” of Pakistan’s first elected prime minister at the behest of then military dictator Gen Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq. “I have been instructed by the ministry of law, justice and parliamentary affairs to obtain a copy of the statement of Masood Mahmood, the so-called approver in the case of Shaheed Quaid-e-Awam Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, FIR No.402 of 1974 dated Nov 11, 1974 under Sections 302, 307 Pakistan Penal Code, registered at Police Station Ichhra, Lahore,” a senior ministry consultant, Arif Chaudhry, said in the one-page application.

The statement of Mr Mahmood, who was chief of Federal Security Force under the Bhutto government, was recorded by the then resident magistrate of Islamabad, Ghazanfar Zia, Mr Chaudhry told Dawn.

A certified copy of the statement is expected to be relied upon by the government counsel before the Supreme Court during the hearing of a presidential reference, which has been fixed for April 13, legal sources said.

Mr Chaudhry’s application was filed against the backdrop of media reports that Mr Mahmood, in his statement before Mr Ghazanfar Zia, did not nominate Mr Bhutto in the murder of Nawab Muhammad Ahmad Khan, but did so in a second statement recorded by another magistrate in Lahore under section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code that named Mr Bhutto as the main conspirator.

In a related development, a private petition was filed in the Supreme Court on Friday by a local advocate, Tariq Asad, seeking initiation of contempt of court proceedings against former chief justice Dr Nasim Hasan Shah, for having stated in a media interview that there was not enough evidence against Mr Bhutto and that he should have voted against his hanging as one of seven apex court judges who had upheld a Lahore High Court conviction 4-3.

The petition, which is yet to be taken up by the court, cited what it called a “general impression in the political circles” that the only purpose of the presidential reference was to embarrass and scandalise the Supreme Court by highlighting that all judges who had given the verdict against Mr Bhutto were from Punjab province and those who had dissented were from Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhawa, and accused Dr Nasim Hasan Shah of giving “a very irresponsible statement” amounting to the violation of his oath and code of conduct.