The Hindu : Zardari completes seven years in jail

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Nov 04, 2003

International

International

Zardari completes seven years in jail

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD Nov. 3. Asif Ali Zardari, husband of the former Pakistan Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, today created a record of sorts as he completed seven years behind the bars

without conviction in a single case.

There are seven Accountability References (misuse of office, corruption and accumulation of wealth beyond known sources of income) pending against him at Rawalpindi and Attock Fort, and six criminal cases in Karachi since 1996. He is being tried in special courts under special laws.

Mr. Zardari was arrested on November 4, 1996. He has been in prison through the unfinished Nawaz regime, the three-year military rule of Pervez Musharraf and nearly one-year civil rule of Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali.

Strangely none of the regimes till date has been able to obtain a conviction against Mr. Zardari even in a single case. The law provides for statutory bail after two years in jail but this is denied to him.

It also provides for the release of a person on medical grounds, again denied to him though he claims to have provided necessary proof of ill-health to authorities.

Mr. Zardari is a special prisoner as he not only monitors the functioning of the Pakistan People's Party but also guides it. He makes it a point to be available to the press every time he is produced in a court of law in connection with some case or the other.

The PPP has bestowed him the title of "prisoner of conscience" and misses no opportunity to publicise the plight of Mr. Zardari and his family. His children who stay with Ms. Bhutto, living in exile in Dubai, were recently flown for a union with the father and for the PPP it was an emotional moment.

Tomorrow, the party rank and file is holding a protest demonstration in front of Parliament House against the continued incarceration of Mr. Zardari. MNAs and Senators led by the vice-chairman, PPP, Makhdoom Amin Fahim will then march towards the Supreme Court building to protest against the "political" victimisation of Mr. Zardari and keeping him in jail for the eighth year.

The PPP claims that the establishment has used every trick in the book to implicate Mr. Zardari. "To pressure Mr. Zardari his old and ailing father was unjustly kept in jail for several years and his brother-in-law, Mir Munawar Talpur, was re-arrested eight times as each time a court freed him''.

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