©Reuters. A view of the Supreme Court of Pakistan building during sunset hours in Islamabad, Pakistan, October 3, 2023. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro/File Photo
By Asif Shahzad
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – 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 get a fair trial.
Bhutto, the founder of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), now led by his nephew and former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, was hanged in 1979 after a trial under the military regime of the late General Zia-ul-Haq.
“We have not found that the requirements of due process and due process have been met,” Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa said during the live telecast of the ruling which he said was a unanimous decision by a panel of nine members led by him.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif welcomed the ruling. “It is a positive development that a mistake made by a court has been corrected by a court,” he said in a statement from his office.
The ruling came in response to a judicial appeal filed by Bhutto Zardari’s father, Asif Ali Zardari, during his term as president in 2011. He was seeking an opinion from the Supreme Court on the review of the death sentence given to the founder of the PPP.
“Our family has waited 3 generations to hear these words,” Bhutto Zardari later said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The court will pass a detailed order later.
“It is an admission of a colossal miscarriage of justice under Zia’s martial law regime,” said Yousuf Nazar, a London-based political commentator and close aide to the late Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and former prime minister. She was murdered in 2007.
Human rights groups say Haq’s 11-year dictatorship was marked by an attack on democracy, the persecution and imprisonment of PPP workers and the public flogging of opponents and critics.
Nazar said the regime also pushed the conservative Muslim nation into extremism and militancy by supporting and supporting militant groups to fight a U.S. proxy war against the then-Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
“This has led to an unprecedented level of support and advocacy for religious extremists at the state level,” he said.