Islamabad, Pakistan — A nine-member bench of Pakistan’s top court will on December 12 hear a plea to review a 44-year-old death sentence, controversially awarded to former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, two months before national elections.
In June 2011, Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto’s son-in-law, and then-president of the country has filed what is known as a presidential reference with the Supreme Court. It sought a review of the death penalty, awarded 4-3 by a seven-member Supreme Court bench in February 1979, which was later implemented when Bhutto was hanged in April 1979.
