World | Pakistan
Accountability court quashes last of cases against Zardari
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Asif Ali Zardari stood cleared of all long-pending corruption charges after an accountability court on Friday quashed the last of the seven cases against him.
- By Shahid Hussain, Correspondent
- Published: 21:53 March 14, 2008
Islamabad: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Asif Ali Zardari stood cleared of all long-pending corruption charges after an accountability court on Friday quashed the last of the seven cases against him.
The reprieve comes even as the country awaits a PPP-led coalition government expected to be formed next week.
The court acquitted Zardari of the charge that he had cheated on taxes in importing a luxury car when a PPP government was in power. The case was initiated in 2001 by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
Stay annulled
Earlier this month, accountability courts dismissed six other corruption cases against Zardari under a national reconciliation ordinance issued by President Pervez Musharraf in October as part of a deal with Bhutto, who returned home from exile but fell victim to a terrorist attack in December. Her assassination led to the elections being postponed until February.
The ordinance granted amnesty to those who had been in public office in cases filed before 1999 that had been pending without any decision.
The move benefited not only Bhutto and Zardari but a number of others.
Before the November judicial purge by Musharraf following the imposition of a state of emergency, the Supreme Court headed by then chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry had suspended the implementation of the ordinance, but the restructured court under new Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar quickly annulled the stay.
Zardari's lawyer Farooq H. Naek, talking to reporters in Rawalpindi, said the truth had finally prevailed.
"Thank God the agony is over," he said, adding that Zardari had been falsely implicated in the cases for political reasons. He said not a single charge could be proved against his client though he had been kept in jail for more than eight years before the courts finally bailed him out. He said the Sindh High Court had already directed the government and the NAB to withdraw all pending proceedings against Zardari in Geneva and London by March 21, failing which they would be liable to contempt.
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