A retired US ambassador has reignited the debate about one of south Asia's greatest whodunits, the death in 1988 of Pakistan's president, General Zia ul-Haq, by saying that Israel was responsible.
John Gunther Dean, the then-US ambassador to India, said he suspected Israel's secret service Mossad of downing Zia's aircraft in an effort to stop Pakistan developing the nuclear bomb.
But when he reported these suspicions to Washington, Dean was accused of being mentally unbalanced and subsequently forced into retirement.
Almost 20 years later, Dean,80, was speaking out in an attempt to clear his name and tell his side of the story.
The circumstances of Zia's death are as contentious as the 1963 assassination of US president John F Kennedy.
The military dictator died on Aug. 17, 1988, after leaving the town of Bahawalpur, in Punjab Province, where he had been watching a trial of US M1 tanks.
Moments after Zia's C-130 plane took off it wobbled then plunged to the ground, killing all on board including the US ambassador to Pakistan and a US general.
Conspiracy theorists have focused on a crate of mangos placed on board moments before take-off.
Some believe it was sprayed with VX, a poison gas, which only a few countries had.
Zia had a long list of enemies, all of whom have been blamed for his death over the years. But Israel has received little attention until now.
In an interview in the World Policy Journal, Dean said it was plausible that Mossad had orchestrated an assassination plot, believing Zia's boast that he was only "a screwdriver's turn away from the bomb."
Dean, a Jew who fled Nazi Germany, said he had no proof of Israeli responsibility.
General Muhammad Ali Durrani, a retired Zia-era commander, told the journal the Israeli thesis was "far-fetched" and blamed the crash on the C-130, which he said had a history of faults.
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