Ziauddin Butt

General Khawaja Ziauddin Abbasi (Urdu: خواجہ ضیاء الدین عباسى), also known as Ziauddin Butt (Urdu: ضیاء الدین بٹ), is a retired four-star rank army general in the Pakistan Army, who served as the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), for few hours, until Chairman joint chiefs General Pervez Musharraf reasserted the command and control of the military despite his termination on 12 October 1999. His appointment as the chief of army staff is distinguishable since he was the first army engineer and the first Director ISI who was appointed to four-star command appointment. His career in the military spent as an engineering officer Pakistan Army Corps of Engineers before becoming the spymaster in the ISI on 7 October 1998. After the military's war performance in Kargil against the Indian Army, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif forcefully terminated the commission of then-Chairman joint chiefs and then-army chief General Pervez Musharraf by elevating General Ziauddin as an army chief on 12 October 1999. This order of promotion was then refused by General Musharraf's military staff as General Musharraf immediately led the military takeover of the civilian government while dismissing General Zia from his appointment and commission. After a nearly two-year military investigation which found no evidence of his involvement in Prime Minister Sharif's decisions during the coup, Zia retired from his military service in 2001. In 2011, Ziauddin revealed to the news media that, it was Brigadier Ijaz Shah, the DG of Intelligence Bureau from 2004 to 2008, who had provided the support and hideout to Osama bin Laden in a IB's safe house in Abbottabad. But he later denied making any such statements.