Smash hit

Early reports suggested that Raphel had only been summoned to join the flight at the last minute, fuelling conspiracy theories blaming the US.

But Nancy Ely-Raphel, the Ambassador’s widow, told The Times that her husband always planned to join General Zia on the aircraft, and that it was General Wassom who was added at the last minute.

Mrs Ely-Raphel, who later became US Ambassador to Slovenia, was working for the US Agency for International Development in Pakistan at the time. She was in Karachi on that day and had just gone to the US Consul-General’s residence when he told her the news of her husband’s death. “Initially I thought maybe it was Benazir’s brother, but no one has ever taken credit for it and those things are not the kind of things you do by yourself. Pakistan is not the kind of place where those things do not come out,” she said.

Washington sent a team of US Air Force officers to assist the Pakistanis in the investigation. The two sides reached sharply different conclusions.

Mrs Ely-Raphel and Brigadier-General Wassom’s wife, Judy, were both told by US investigators that the crash was caused by a mechanical fault.

“It seems there was a mechanical failure for a C-130 in Colorado and the same thing happened,” Mrs Ely-Raphel said. “A C-130 had gone into gyrations in the air over Colorado. It was not as close to the ground. They pulled it out.

“It was the steering mechanism, is the way he described it to me. It did not crash but it went through these gyrations up in the air and the pilot pulled it out. I had always thought C130s were the workhorses of the air. I was quite surprised when the Air Force described to me what they had discovered,” she said.

M rs Wassom says she has had to abandon her suspicions that it was sabotage. “My personal feelings about it was that it was not an accident. However, I was told – I do not know how much after – that the Army had investigated and that it was an accident,” she said. “They gave me some kind of mechanical reason for it.”

Mr Oakley identified the mechanical fault as a problem with the hydraulics in the tail assembly. Although US Air Force pilots had handled such emergencies, the Pakistani pilots were less well equipped to do so. “These pilots did not have much experience flying C130s and they flew so low,” he said.

Looking back, Mr Oakley draws parallels between the sudden end of General Zia and the eclipse of General Musharraf, who may be forced to step down as head of state next week.

“For Zia, like Musharraf I think, his time was running out. I was amazed at the very strong exhilaration after he crashed. I think it was a country about to explode. This opened the way for really quite free and fair elections. Mrs Bhutto won and made a mess out of it and it all went downhill,” Mr Oakley said.

Indeed the failure of civilian rule prompted General Musharraf’s coup in 1999. While his era is almost over, there are fears that the cycle may be repeated. The deeply divided coalition Government running the country is engaged in a fierce power struggle and faces a growing insurgency. Many fear the chaos may sow the seeds for another military takeover.

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