Word: bhutto
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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With weary patience, the seven justices of Pakistan's Supreme Court have been primarily engaged since last May in hearing Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's appeal against his death sentence. Last week, in a narrow 4-to-3 verdict, the justices confirmed the sentence imposed on the former Prime Minister by the Lahore high court for ordering the 1974 assassination of a political enemy by the feared Federal Security Force...
...judges divided mainly over the credibility and motives of Masood Mahmood, former chief of the now disbanded F.S.F., who had turned state's evidence. But the court also split along ominous lines for a country torn by regional rivalries. The three dissenting judges who voted to free Bhutto came from his native province of Sind and two provinces bordering troubled Afghanistan and Iran. The four judges in the majority are from Punjab, where middle-class revulsion against Bhutto's autocratic rule was strongest...
...message by Bhutto, smuggled out of prison before the Supreme Court ruling, warned that "my sons will not be my sons if they do not drink the blood of those who shed my blood." In fact, popular reaction to the verdict was muted, and is likely to remain so as long as hundreds of Bhutto district leaders and party officials remain under arrest and barred from organizing demonstrations. Appeals for commutation of the sentence came from President Carter, British Prime Minister James Callaghan, Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev and Pope John Paul II. Another petitioner was Premier Bulent Ecevit of Turkey...
...years ago, Pakistan has had three constitutions and suffered through three military coups, plus repeated doses of martial law. In July 1977 General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, the army Chief of Staff, seized power after aggrieved mullahs and members of the middle class took to the streets to protest Bhutto's political corruption. Zia has moved cautiously to cleanse politics and restructure the nation's criminal and financial codes along Islamic lines...
...Before Bhutto goes to the gallows, his lawyers can ask the Supreme Court to review the case for possible legal errors. The family of the former Prime Minister may also appeal to Zia for executive clemency. Domestic political considerations are likely to weigh more heavily than foreign opinion as Zia makes his final decision on whether or not to apply a stiff dose of Islamic justice and carry out his threat to "hang the blighter...