Daily Times

KARACHI/ISLAMABAD: Former president and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Asif Ali Zardari will file appeal against the anti-terrorism court (ATC) verdict in Benazir Bhutto assassination case.

The decision was taken at a party meeting at Bilawal House in Karachi on Thursday.

Party spokesperson Senator Farhatullah Babar said that Zardari will file appeal as legal heir of the victim. Sardar Latif Khosa will represent him in the case.

On August 31 its verdict after a 10-year trial, the court acquitted five accused for want of evidence, sentenced two cops to jail for ‘mishandling the crime scene’ and declared former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, who was president at the time, a fugitive.

It was also decided that Bilawal will become an intervener in the presidential reference filed by Zardari in the Supreme Court to revisit the death sentence handed to Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged by the government in 1979.

According to a statement released by the party, Senator Farooq Naek will represent Bilawal in pursuing the reference, which was filed in 2011.

Meanwhile, two senior police officers who were sentenced to 17 years in prison for negligence and security lapses that lead to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto challenged the judgement in Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Thursday.

The appeals, filed on behalf of the police officers by their lawyers, urged the high court to release the convicts after overturning the sentences handed to them. The applications argued the officers who provided security services have been made ‘scapegoats’, adding that the prosecution did not have any solid evidence against them.

Published in Daily Times, September 8^th 2017.