Islamabad: Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Tuesday resumed hearing a long-pending presidential reference seeking to revisit the 1979 controversial death penalty given to former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
A nine-member larger bench of the apex court, headed by chief justice Qazi Faez Isa, took up the case for hearing.
Bhutto was hanged to death in 1979 after he was convicted for abetment in a murder case. The execution was carried after a seven-member Supreme Court upheld the conviction, which many believed was done under coercion exercised by then military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq who had toppled Bhutto’s government in 1977.
Former President Asif Ali Zardari on April 2, 2011 had sent a formal request to the court for an opinion on revisiting the death sentence given to Bhutto under the Supreme Court’s advisory jurisdiction.
The case was last heard by an 11-judge panel, headed by then chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, in Jan 2012.
The case proceedings are being broadcast live on the request of Bhutto’s grandson Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.
Bhutto is revered as a symbol of resistance to undemocratic forces in Pakistan and a champion of the underdog.
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