Prosecutor in Benazir Bhutto Case Shot Dead
Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali, a lawyer who was leading the push to prosecute Pakistan's former military dictator in the slaying of ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was killed Friday as he was driving to court in Islamabad.
Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali, a lawyer who was leading the push to prosecute Pakistan’s former military dictator in the slaying of ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was killed Friday as he was driving to court in Islamabad.
A “hail of bullets” was unloaded on Ali’s car by unidentified gunmen riding on motorbikes as he was traveling through the busy Pakistani capital, police reported. Pervez Musharraf, the dictator facing prosecution, is now under house arrest as part of the investigation.
Bhutto was killed in a bombing in late December 2007 after returning to Pakistan from nine years of self-exile. She had been granted amnesty by then-President Musharraf on charges of corruption leveled against her in relation to her presidency in the 1990s.
— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.
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Ali had been acting as a state prosecutor in one of the cases against Musharraf, the former coup leader who returned to Pakistan in March for what has been a disastrous bid to contest seats in the country’s general elections.
Ali argued in court that Musharraf, who is under house arrest, should not be allowed bail in a case where he is accused of conspiring to murder Bhutto, the former two-time prime minister of Pakistan who was killed in a gun and suicide attack at an election rally in 2007.
Musharraf, it is claimed, failed to use his powers as president at the time to provide sufficient security for Bhutto.
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