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Bhutto Wins Legal Battle
ISLAMABAD, April 6 (News Agencies) - Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto won a major legal battle Friday when the Supreme Court set aside her five-year corruption conviction and ordered a re-trial of the case.
In a unanimous verdict, the seven-judge court also issued a similar ruling on the appeal of her jailed husband Asif Ali Zardari, convicted along with Bhutto in 1999 during the regime of ousted premier Nawaz Sharif.
"We accept the appeals and set aside the impugned judgment recording convictions against and awarding sentences to the appellants and send the case to a court of competent jurisdiction for re-trial," the Supreme Court verdict said.
The verdict was greeted with jubilation by Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), which has been waiting for her to return from a self-exile and take up an active role in national politics.
Bhutto and her husband had argued that their convictions for allegedly taking huge kickbacks from a Swiss firm during her 1993-96 rule had been politically motivated.
Bhutto and Zardari were given five-year prison sentences, fined a total of $8.6 million and disqualified from parliament for seven years by an accountability bench of the Lahore High Court.
Bhutto went into self-exile in London shortly before her conviction while Zardari has been in prison since Bhutto's government was dismissed in 1996.
Party sources described the decision as a setback for the 18-month-old regime of General Pervez Musharraf, who has vowed to keep both Bhutto and Sharif away from politics for allegedly plundering the nation's wealth.
Bhutto told the BBC the verdict proved she and her husband were innocent even if they were to be re-tried.
"The foreign jurists have said that there isn't any merit in the charges against Benazir Bhutto. And I look at it that my country's judiciary operates in an atmosphere of coercion and oppression," she said.
"Just yesterday coup leader General Musharraf said that he would get me out of the way and today, with this verdict, the judiciary have shown that when they will they can stand up to the forces of dictatorship and uphold the scales of justice."
Asked in another interview by British-based Sky News if she would now go back to Pakistan, Bhutto said: "I have called all my colleagues over for a consultation as to setting the date."
"One big hurdle to my return has been removed and it's important for me to go back and be part of the democratic process in my country."
Officials said an anti-corruption court set up by the regime's National Accountability Bureau (NAB) would conduct Bhutto's retrial -which she dubbed "a charade".
PPP vice chairman Makhdoom Amin Fahim demanded the release of Zardari and the withdrawal of "politically motivated cases against opponents".
Zardari should be freed as "his conviction has been set aside," Fahim said.
He said Bhutto's return would be decided by the PPP high command at a meeting expected later this month.
Bhutto, who became the first female prime minister in the modern-day Muslim world in 1988, has been twice elected and twice dismissed by successive presidents for misrule and corruption.
Her appeal began in mid-March, with her lawyers calling the conviction a political vendetta.
Lawyers for the appellants also asked that audiotapes allegedly showing the original trial had been politically manipulated be included as evidence in the case.
Britain's Sunday Times newspaper in February published transcripts of alleged conversations between original trial Judge Malik Abdul Qayyum and key figures in Sharif's ousted government, apparently showing he delivered the verdict under political pressure.
Musharraf, who ousted Sharif in October 1999 and sent him to live in exile in Saudi Arabia following a deal brokered by the Saudi royal family in December, has promised to hold parliamentary elections by October 2002.
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