RAWALPINDI, March 14: Asif Ali Zardari, the co-chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party, on Friday emerged as one of the cleanest politicians in the country after he was acquitted in the last remaining corruption case against him.

Mr Zardari had been tried for over a decade and kept in prison for most of the period after being accused on more than a dozen counts of corruption.

The only case brought against Mr Zardari by President Pervez Musharraf’s government — relating to import of a BMW car — was settled by a special court in his favour.

Accountability Court No.3 judge Saghir Ahmed Qadri said in his order the prosecution had failed to prove charges of Mr Zardari’s involvement in the import of the 1993 model car from England and evasion of customs duty.

The court ordered that the vehicle which had been impounded from a showroom in Islamabad should be given in government custody if no one claimed it within 30 days.

The judge said the property of MNA-elect Raja Pervaiz Ashraf confiscated by the court when Mr Zardari did not turn up for hearing after his bail could not be released because the mater was pending before the Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi bench. As Mr Ashraf had submitted a surety bond in the court to obtain Mr Zardari’s bail, his pledged property was confiscated.

Talking to reporters after the verdict, Mr Zardari’s lawyer Farooq Hamid Naek said all the cases against the PPP leader were politically motivated and they stood terminated.

He said Mr Zardari had been cleared in the BMW case on merit as it did not fall under the ambit of the National Reconciliation Ordinance because it had been filed by the National Accountability Bureau in 2001, apparently to stop the release of the PPP leader after he had obtained bail in other cases.

The counsel said his client had remained in jail for eight years and the state could not prove any charge against him. Although there could be no compensation for the long incarceration, Mr Zardari did not believe in politics of revenge, he said.

The acquittal in the BMW case has settled what is being described here as a long-drawn court battle to nail Asif Zardari. It had started with the dismissal of Benazir Bhutto’s second government in 1996 by then president, Farooq Ahmed Leghari, and arrest of Asif Zardari on a series of charges ranging from corruption and misuse of authority to involvement in murder.

The most trying times for Mr Zardari, however, came during Nawaz Sharif’s second stint as premier. Saifur Rehman, Mr Nawaz’s trusted friend, gave himself over to pursuing the cases against Mr Zardari.

Millions of dollars were spent on laying an international network to investigate off-shore accounts, leading to the filing of cases in Switzerland and Britain, which are still pending.

SHERPAO’S PLEA: Another accountability court put off till March 21 the hearing of an appeal for acquittal of former interior minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao in a corruption reference because the judge concerned had been transferred.