A nine-member larger bench of the Supreme Court (SC) has commenced hearing an 11-year-old presidential reference seeking to revisit the contentious death sentence awarded to former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979. The bench is headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa and comprises Justice Sardar Tariq Masood, Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, Justice Yahya Afridi, Justice Amin-ud-Din Khan, Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhel, Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar, Justice Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi and Justice Musarrat Hilali. The hearing of the case is being broadcast live. Pakistan Peoples Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari are also attending the proceedings. On April 2, 2011, then-president Asif Ali Zardari approached the apex court through a presidential reference under Article 186 of the Constitution of Pakistan to seek its opinion on revisiting the trial of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) founder. The last hearing of the reference took place on November 11, 2012. Babar Awan, who has now joined the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), had earlier appeared as the federal government’s counsel in the case and had given lengthy arguments. However, on January 17, 2012, Awan’s law practice license was suspended for criticising the court’s order in the Memogate case. Read PPP asks SC to declare Bhutto’s execution a ‘judicial murder’ In the last hearing, PPP’s counsel Aitzaz Ahsan could not appear because he had travelled to Karachi to attend the funeral of late Iqbal Haider, a party stalwart and a senior advocate of the apex court. Accepting the five preliminary questions of law regarding revising the case, the apex court on April 21, 2011, nominated several legal experts as ‘amicus curiae’ or friends of the court, to assist it over the issue. A few of the amici have now passed away. On January 2, 2012, the Supreme Court also issued notice to Ahmed Raza Kasuri, the man who had lodged the first information report (FIR) against the PPP founder. Kasuri, in his reply, had opposed the reopening of the case arguing that the president was an “interested party”. History of the case Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who took over as president of Pakistan immediately after the fall of Dhaka in December 1971, and later became the prime minister after the 1973 Constitution, was removed from the government through the martial law imposed on July 5, 1977, led by military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq. On September 3, he was arrested in the case of March 1974 murder of Nawab Muhammad Ahmad Khan Kasuri. He was released 10 days later, after a court found the charges against him "contradictory and incomplete". He was rearrested on the same charges and arraigned before the Lahore High Court (LHC). On March 18, 1978, Bhutto was declared guilty of the murder, and was sentenced to death. The decision was challenged in the Supreme Court and on February 6, 1979. The top court voted 4-3 to issue a guilty verdict and upheld the high court decision. On March 24, 1979 the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and Gen Zia upheld the death sentence. Bhutto was hanged at the Rawalpindi Central Jail on April 4, 1979 and was buried at his family mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Baksh. On April 2, 2011, 32 years after Bhutto's trial and execution, the PPP, then the ruling party, filed the reference for reopening of Bhutto's trial. It is important to mention that the apex court judgement on the hanging of Bhutto has never been referred to as a precedent by the judges in any case.
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