Pakistan’s Supreme Court will issue a detailed order later.
Islamabad:
Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged 44 years ago after being found guilty of murder, did not receive a fair trial.
Bhutto was the founder of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), now led by his grandson Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the former foreign minister. Bhutto was hanged in 1979 after being tried under the military regime of the late General Zia-ul-Haq.
“We believe that the requirements of a fair trial and due process have not been met,” Chief Justice Qazi Faez Issa said in the televised ruling, which he said was delivered unanimously by the nine judges he led. Decide.
The ruling came in response to a judicial reference filed by Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto’s father, during his term as president in 2011. The ruling seeks the Supreme Court’s opinion on revisiting the death sentence imposed on the PPP founder.
“Our family has waited three generations to hear these words,” Bhutto Zardari later said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The court will issue a detailed order later.
“This is an admission of a serious miscarriage of justice under Zia’s martial law regime,” said Yusuf Nazar, a London-based political commentator and close aide to the late prime minister.
Human rights groups say Haq’s 11-year dictatorship was marked by attacks on democracy, the persecution and imprisonment of PPP workers and the public flogging of opponents and critics.
The regime also supported militant groups fighting a U.S. proxy war in Afghanistan against the then-Soviet Union, pushing the conservative Muslim country toward extremism and militancy, Nazar said.
“This has led to unprecedented levels of support and patronage for religious extremists at the national level,” he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
