ISLAMABAD(PTI): A special court Feb.6 granted bail to Asif Zardari, Pakistan’s most prominent political prisoner and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s husband, in the last of the 12 criminal cases filed against him, paving the way for his release from a Karachi prison after over two years of incarceration.
Justice (retd) Fakhruddin H.Shickh, presiding over the special court for suppression of terrorist activities, granted bail to Zardari, 39, in the “unnar case” in which he had been charged with kidnapping and extortion. He was expected to be freed later in the day after the court order reached a Karachi hospital where Zardari had been undergoing treatment for pain in joints.
Zardari was arrested in October 1990, two months after President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed the government of Bhutto on grounds of corruption and misrule.
During the proceedings which lasted barely five minutes, the court asked him to furnish a surety of Rs half a million and same amount in personal bonds.
Zardari had earlier been acquitted in nine presidential references including charges of murder and granted bail in two other criminal cases. The Sindh high court had last Sunday granted bail to Zardari on charges of possession of illegal arms. He was earlier granted bail in a case of fixing of bank loans.
Bhutto, who is currently in London where she delivered her third child on Wednesday last, is facing eight charges of corruption and mismanagement in special courts.
Reports reaching here quoted a Landhi jail official in Karachi as having said that a police posse, posted outside Zardari’s hospital room, had been withdrawn. “We are now waiting for the court order” for further action, he added.
A Karachi businessman and a member of national assembly from Lyari slum constituency in Karachi, Zardari told newsmen at the hospital that “now I will fight from outside instead of the inside, we have won one battle. But there are others to fight, the struggle will continue. Nothing had changed.”
Zardari has also submitted to the court to allow him to proceed to London where his wife is expected to undergo surgery for stones in gall bladder. The hearing on the plea is likely to be held on Sunday. According to reports, his name figures in the exit control list.
Zardari’s bail proceeding had become a center of controversy when the govt. promulgated a presidential ordinance which took away power from the high courts and the supreme court to grant bail to an accused facing trial before a special court for suppression of terrorist activities.
Bowing to pressure from human rights groups and caustic press comments, the govt decided to withdraw the ordinance.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 12, 1993
