ISLAMABAD, Dec 19 : Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto has criticized the military regime “for cooking up another case” against her husband, Senator Asif Ali Zardari, and said that it was attempt to continue keeping him under arrest.

A court had ordered Mr Zardari’s release on December 15 but his arrest was re-ordered by the Musharraf military regime.

Ms. Bhutto said that by re-arresting Senator Zardari, the regime was making a mockery of the judiciary. “Those convicted by the courts, including drug barons, are freed while those freed by the courts are re-arrested,” she said.

The PPP chairperson said she was surprised by the arrest of the Senator after a court had freed him on bail just before Eid.

“I have 13 court orders for the release of Mr Zardari since 1998,” she said adding that the military regime continued to hold him hostage to her political career.

Ms. Bhutto said that her children had kept fasts during the month of Ramazan praying for their fathers‘s release. “To arrest him on Eid Day by sending orders by plane was cruel,” she noted. “But God punishes the cruel and I put my faith in Him”.

The former prime minister said she accepts her sufferings as paying a price for her opposition to the military dictatorship. However, she expressed her concern for the judiciary.

“It makes a mockery of the judicial process when a person ordered released is re-arrested on another trumped up charge,” the opposition leader said while expressing her concern for the “state-sponsored perversion of justice”.

When the investigative apparatus is politically motivated and concocted or criminal cases are filed against individuals, the majesty of justice is trampled and a pristine principle tarnished, she observed.

Reiterating her demand for establishing a “truth and reconciliation commission”, she said the people must know how their democratic leaders were destabilized, demonized and how scores of people were arrested, tortured, coerced, bribed or otherwise threatened to pervert the course of justice.

Ms Bhuto said that General Musharraf‘s regime had refused to investigate the charge of state officials’ resorting to torture to perjure justice, although torture is banned by the United Nations Human Rights Convention. “It is also a punishable offence”.

She noted that in England, cabinet ministers were imprisoned for perjury

“I want the judicial process in Pakistan to be strengthened by exposing those who perverted the course of justice,” she added.