Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary on Wednesday constituted an eleven-member bench of the Supreme Court for hearing the presidential reference for revisiting Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s murder trial.
The bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary will resume the hearing of the reference on May 2.
The bench will give its observations in answer to the five questions raised by President Asif Ali Zardari more than thirty years after ZA Bhutto was hanged after what his supporters claim was a stage-managed trial. On the last hearing of the reference, Babar Awan, the federation’s counsel, presented five specific questions of law before the court.
Awan has asked the bench if the conviction leading to the execution of ZA Bhutto was binding on all other courts and was the death sentence justified in the peculiar circumstances of this case or would it amount to deliberate murder keeping in view the bias against ZA Bhutto?
The president has also inquired whether the verdict against Bhutto fulfills the requirements of Islamic laws as codified in the Holy Quran and the Sunnah and finally whether on the basis of conclusions arrived at and inferences drawn from the evidence in the case, an order for conviction and sentence Bhutto could have been passed?
In view of the importance of the reference, senior jurists were appointed as amicus curiae (court assistants). The chief justice also directed Attorney General of Pakistan Maulvi Anwarul Haq and Advocates General of all the provinces to appear before the court in the reference.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 28th, 2011.
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