The Supreme Court has appointed nine amici curiae (friends of the court) to assist in the 12-year-old Zulfikar Ali Bhutto reference, adjourning the hearing until January next year.
The nine-member larger apex court bench, led by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa, included other justices such as Sardar Tariq Masood, Mansoor Ali Shah, Yahya Afridi, Aminud Din Khan, Jamal Khan Mandokhail, Muhammad Ali Mazhar, Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi, and Musarrat Hilali.
During the hearing, Justice Shah raised questions about the 12-year-old presidential reference seeking to review the death sentence awarded to the founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
Expressing concerns, Justice Shah sought assistance in determining legal questions, highlighting that the court had already dismissed the appeal against its verdict, and such matters had achieved finality.
Former president Asif Ali Zardari had approached the apex court on April 2, 2011, through a presidential reference under Article 186 of the Constitution, seeking its opinion on revisiting the trial of the PPP founder.
The court had previously conducted five hearings on the presidential reference, with the last one held on November 11, 2012, under the leadership of former Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.
Attorney General for Pakistan (AGP) Mansoor Usman Awan represented the federal government in the reference, while Farooq H Naek appeared on behalf of PPP chief Zardari, who applied to become a party in the matter.
Advocate Ahmed Raza Kasuri, who lodged the first information report (FIR) against the former prime minister, also appeared before the bench, requesting the CJP to hear his arguments in the case.
The decision to fix the instant case was made under Section 2(1) of the Supreme Court (Practice and Procedure) Act, 2023, by a three-member committee comprising CJP Isa, Justice Masood, and Justice Ijaz Ul Ahsan.
Following the initial hearing, the top court appointed nine more amici curiae, including Justice (retd) Manzoor Malik, Advocate Khawaja Haris, PPP Senator Raza Rabbani, Advocate Khalid Javed, Barrister Salahuddin Ahmed, Advocate Faisal Siddiqui, Zahid Ibrahim, Yasir Qureshi, and Barrister Salman Safdar, to assist in criminal and constitutional aspects of the case. Legal experts Makhdom Ali Khan and Ali Ahmed Kurd had already been appointed as amici curiae.
