As Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa Wednesday read out the short order in the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto reference, Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was seen fighting his emotions and getting teary-eyed as he stood before the bench.
Issuing its reserved opinion on the trial, sentence, and execution of the late prime minister and PPP founder, the apex court said Bhutto did not get a chance for a “fair trial”.
“Zulfikar Ali Bhutto did not get a fair trial and it was not in accordance with the Constitutional requirement of due process,” said CJP Isa while announcing the short order.
Bilawal, his party’s legal team and veteran members stood before the judges, listening to the content of the order.
As the chief justice began reading, Bilawal was seen getting sentimental and later using his handkerchief to wipe tears flowing down his face.
The issuance of the verdict was an emotional moment for the young politician who comes from one of the most politically persecuted families in the world with several of its members being killed and murdered in various instances.
Bilawal’s mother and the world’s first Muslim head of state, Benazir Bhutto, was killed in an assassination attack in December 2007, just a couple of months after she returned to Pakistan after years of living in a self-imposed exile.
His uncle Murtaza Bhutto was also gunned down in Karachi on September 20, 1996; and his younger uncle Shahnawaz Bhutto was found dead under mysterious circumstances in Nice, France, on July 18, 1985.
Meanwhile, the court’s order in the ZAB reference today comes after nearly 12 years after a presidential reference seeking to revisit the sentence, and execution of the PPP founder and former premier was filed by former president and PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari.
Bhutto was executed on April 4, 1979, following a verdict of the Supreme Court in a murder case that his party termed as “judicial murder”.
The reference — filed by Zardari on April 2, 2011, under Article 186 of the Constitution — was taken up by the Supreme Court’s 11-member larger bench headed by former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry which held five hearings of the reference.
On December 12, 2023, the reference hearing resumed under a nine-member bench headed by CJP Isa following a decision to fix an instant case under the Supreme Court (Practice and Procedure) Act, 2023.
The SC had appointed amicus curies with expertise on the criminal and constitutional sides, seeking their assistance, particularly on the matter of maintainability of the instant reference, pending with the court for 11 years.