Islamabad, Sep 18 (IANS) The Pakistan Peoples Party on Monday lodged three appeals against an Anti-Terror Court verdict that absolved five suspects of conspiring to assassinate the nation's first woman Prime Minister in 2007.
PPP lawyer Latfi Khosa called on the court to issue death sentences to the five suspects who allegedly belonged to the Pakistani Taliban and on August 31 were acquitted of Benazir Bhutto's murder due to a lack of evidence. Two police officers were, however, convicted of negligence and tampering with evidence, for which they were fined 500,000 rupees ($4,700) and sentenced to 17 years in prison.
Khosa said the death penalty should also apply to Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, who was in power at the time of Bhutto's assassination, Efe news reported.
Musharraf left the country in March 2016 on medical grounds and did not return.
The trial started in 2008 with the five accused, but after the PPP came to power in the same year the investigation was handed over to the Federal Investigation Agency.
The trial was halted in 2009 only to be re-started in 2013.
Bhutto was killed on December 27, 2007 in a suicide attack by a militant who detonated a bomb in a rally in Rawalpindi shortly after the PPP leader returned to Pakistan from exile.
In April 2010, a UN commission held Musharraf responsible for Bhutto's murder and accused him of not providing her with adequate security.
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