Islamabad, Aug 06: A Pakistani court has indicted former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's jailed husband Asif Ali Zardari for the murder of a chairman of a state-run steel mill, officials of her party said today. Charges were laid against Zardari yesterday in a court in the southern port city of Karachi, officials from Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party said. The prosecution charged that Zardari had plotted from his Karachi prison the murder of Sajjad Hussain, a former chairman of Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) who was shot dead in the city in September 1998. An anti-corruption court last year sentenced Zardari to seven years in jail and fined him four million rupees (around 69,000 dollars) for receiving kickbacks in a contract between a private group and PSM.
Hussain was a star witness in the corruption case against Zardari.

Zardari, former senator and an ex-minister who has been in jail since Bhutto's second government was dismissed in 1996, is facing multiple cases of corruption, murder and drugs smuggling. A Swiss magistrate last week found Bhutto, Zardari and their Swiss intermediary guilty of money laundering and handed them a six-month suspended jail sentence, ordering them to return nearly 12 million dollars plus a diamond necklace to Pakistan.
Bureau Report