Test of Wills

At the remote burial ground of Garhi Khuda Baksh, 200 miles northeast of Karachi, hundreds of Pakistanis gathered to pay their respects to Shahnawaz Bhutto, 27, son of the late Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was found dead under mysterious circumstances on the French Riviera last month. Thousands of others were trying to reach the area in the expectation that the funeral would be held this week. But Pakistan's President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq was taking no chances that the outpouring of sympathy for the Bhutto family would turn into a huge and possibly unmanageable political demonstration. Zia conveyed his condolences to young Bhutto's mother, then placed military forces on alert in Sind province, the traditional political turf of Bhutto and his Pakistan People's Party. Soldiers searched all incoming cars, buses, trucks and trains. The government also placed P.P.P. leaders under house arrest and forbade many prominent figures to attend the pending rites.

Shahnawaz Bhutto was found dead on July 18 in the Cannes apartment where he lived with his Afghan-born wife and three-year-old daughter. French authorities, hoping to ascertain what killed him, did not release the body for three weeks. The delay was attributed partly to the fact that since the burial would be in Pakistan, there would be no further opportunity to conduct forensic tests. Inevitably, Bhutto's sudden and unexplained death spawned rumors of political intrigue, including the possibility that he had been murdered.

After the downfall and death of his father, who was overthrown by Zia in 1977 and subsequently executed, Shahnawaz, the youngest of the four Bhutto children, joined his brother Murtaza in organizing a group called Al-Zulfikar, which was dedicated to overthrowing the Zia regime. It was based in Afghanistan and rumored to have ties to Libya and Syria. Last year the two brothers were convicted in absentia for involvement in the 1981 hijacking of a Pakistan International Airlines jet, during which a Pakistani diplomat was killed. Over the past 18 months, Shahnawaz was said to have given up his underground activities and become a partner in a fashionable Geneva restaurant. But French police said they found two revolvers and several forged passports in his apartment, along with the first draft of a book on Pakistan he had been writing.