Details about the failing health of Senator Asif Zardari have been revealed on a dedicated Web site created by the Pakistan Peoples Party to lobby for his release from prison.
Benazir Bhutto's husband is said to be suffering from spondylitis, a growth in his nose, diabetes and high blood pressure. He has also been denied corrective surgery in the right eye and hydrotherapy as advised by doctors, says the site.
Bhutto, who has welcomed the creation of the Web site, said in a statement that it is much needed to provide information to those opposed to injustice and persecution.
The Web site says that Zardari was arrested on November 4, 1996 and has been incarcerated in solitary confinement ever since. Against all cannons of laws and justice, he has been denied both statutory bail after two years in jail and bail on medical grounds.
It gives details of the seven accountability references at Rawalpindi and Attock Fort, and six criminal cases in Karachi against him since 1996 and how Zardari was banished into internal exile in violation of court orders.
Pointing out the politically motivated nature of the cases, the Web site says the ruling party chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, who was then the minister in charge of narcotics control, publicly admitted how the false cases were instituted for political reasons.
There are details of fabrication of evidence, torture and coercion of witnesses, perjured statements, filing of new cases when granted bail in an old one, repeated arrests of Zardari's father and brother in law as well as changing laws with retrospective effect to keep him confined.
The Web site details how Asif Zardari was given bail in the last of cases in December 2001, but to keep him confined in jail, the regime detained him under other charges, including alleged under payment of duty on the import of a car.
There is also a report on how a judgement was delayed so it could be amended to a guilty verdict. More than two hundred orders passed by competent courts in Karachi demanding Zardari's presence were ignored.
