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| Sunday, 15 September 2002 |
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Bhutto's jailed husband sentenced to seven years ISLAMABAD, Sept 13 (Reuters) - A Pakistan court sentenced the jailed husband of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto to seven years in prison with hard labour for corruption and abuse of power, official media reported. In a ruling late on Thursday, the Accountability Court in Rawalpindi also disqualified Asif Ali Zardari from holding public office for five years after the end of the sentence, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan said. Bhutto's Pakistan's People's Party denounced the verdict in a statement on Friday and said it would appeal. She herself condemned the decison as the "murder of justice" by "pygmies". "Those who perpetrated it will surely be punished as all wrongdoers ultimately are, and those who suffer for a cause will be truly rewarded," she said in a statement released by the PPP. Bhutto said she was proud of her husband, who had "walked in the footsteps" of her father, former president and prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. He was hanged in 1979 after being overthrown in a military coup Zardari was found guilty of receiving kickbacks and misusing his authority as the husband of the then prime minister while serving as a National Assembly member in the mid-1990s. He was also fined 40 million rupees ($675,000). His reputation for corruption during Bhutto's rule, when he also served as investment minister, earned him the nickname "Mr 10 Percent". The court heard that, in September 1995, Zardari received bribes totalling 31.2 million rupees ($520,000) over a contract involving Pakistan Steel Mills and a private corporation. The PPP said the chairman of the steel firm, Sajjad Hussain, had been repeatedly arrested and tortured to persuade him to incriminate Zardari and was later killed under mysterious circumstances. Zardari has been in jail without conviction since Bhutto's government was overthrown in 1996 by then president Farooq Leghari. Zardari had denied corruption charges. The judge did not say whether his six years in jail would count towards his seven-year sentence. In July, an accountability court sentenced Zardari's father to five years in jail for amassing wealth beyond his known sources of income. That sentence came two days after Bhutto, who has been living in self-imposed exile in Britain and Dubai for more than three years, was sentenced to three years jail for failing to appear before it to face a corruption charge. She has been pressing for the right to stand in general elections to be held on October 10, despite the threat of arrest by the military government if she returns to Pakistan. An election tribunal on Friday rejected appeals she had filed against decisions barring her from taking part in the polls. |
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