Pakistan top court says ex-PM Bhutto, hanged in 1979, was denied fair trial

The court’s ruling comes in response to a 2011 reference filed by Bhutto’s son-in-law and former President Asif Ali Zardari.

Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan’s Supreme Court says former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was not given a fair trial in a murder case, leading to his hanging 44 years ago.

Responding to a presidential reference filed 12 years ago, Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa said, “We didn’t find that the fair trial and due process requirements were met.”

Bhutto, founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), was hanged in a prison in Rawalpindi on April 4, 1979, two months after the Supreme Court found him guilty of masterminding the killing of a political rival.

The hanging came two years after Bhutto was removed from power by military dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul Haq, who ruled until he died in a plane crash in August 1988.

The top court’s unanimous ruling on Wednesday wraps up a years-long hearing on the reference filed by Asif Ali Zardari, who as the country’s president in 2011 asked the court’s “opinion” on whether “due process and fair trial were complied with” in Bhutto’s murder trial.

Zardari is the husband of Bhutto’s daughter and two-time Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007 during a political rally, and the father of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the former foreign minister and the current PPP chief.

Forty four years after his judicial murder, the Supreme Court finally acknowledges that this nation’s greatest hope, Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was denied a fair trial and was unjustly taken from this world by a cruel and conniving dictator. SZAB’s blood stains the steps of the…

— Aseefa B Zardari (@AseefaBZ) March 6, 2024

Bhutto’s hanging was condemned by most legal experts in