Pakistan court quashes Zardari graft cases

A Pakistani anti-corruption court yesterday officially quashed five cases against the husband of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and released his frozen assets, lawyers said.

Asif Ali Zardari, 51, took over as head of Benazir's Pakistan People's Party after she was assassinated at a political rally in December. The party emerged as the largest single grouping after elections in February.
The ruling follows a government amnesty granted to Benazir and Zardari in October, which dropped cases against the pair stemming from her two terms as prime minister and paved the way for her return from exile.
"Allah has differentiated truth from lies and justice has been done," Zardari's lawyer, Farooq Naik, told reporters outside the court in Rawalpindi, a garrison city near Islamabad.
The court had "terminated" five cases against Zardari and unfrozen his assets, Naik said. Two more cases were pending but would be thrown out at the next hearing, he said.
"Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari were the victims of Draconian laws, but today all cases have finished like the dark, old night," Naik added.
Prosecutor Zulfiqar Bhutto confirmed that five cases against Zardari had been quashed by the court and two cases were pending in another court.
Zardari spent eight years in prison on various corruption charges dating from Benazir's spells as premier from 1988-1990 and 1993-1996. He was released on bail in late 2004.
Benazir fled Pakistan in 1999 for self-imposed exile in London and Dubai because of the corruption cases but always maintained that they were politically motivated.
She returned home in October after President Pervez Musharraf agreed on the amnesty deal in what was seen as a prelude to a likely power-sharing pact between the two.
But relations between Benazir and Musharraf soured after he imposed a state of emergency in November and then placed her under house arrest. She was then killed in a suicide attack in Rawalpindi on December 27.
The PPP is now set to form a coalition government with former premier Nawaz Sharif -- the man ousted by Musharraf in 1999 -- after they both trounced the president's allies in the parliamentary elections.
Zardari has ruled himself out as a potential prime minister in the new administration despite his role at the helm of the party.
The PPP is set to meet on Thursday to choose the candidate for the premiership, with the party's veteran vice-chairman Makhdoom Amin Fahim the frontrunner for the post.