LAHORE, Nov 4: Resolutions were adopted and slogans raised for the release of Asif Ali Zardari and PML-N’s Makhdoom Javed Hashmi during a sit-in at a camp organized by the People’s Lawyers Forum, here on Tuesday.

The forum recalled that Zardari had completed seven years in prison, the longest period an under-trial prisoner has been detained in the country’s history.

The camp, set up next to the Lahore High Court’s main entrance gate, remained the focus of attention of the political leaders and lawyers alike, as they kept on visiting it throughout the day.

Every time when a leader from a political party or the bar came to visit the camp, he or she was greeted with cheers and slogans. Those staging the sit-in mostly belonged to the PLF, but almost all the visitors joined them in the camp for expressing solidarity with them.

Mr Zardari was arrested from the governor’s house in Lahore on Nov 5, 1997, when president Farooq Leghari dissolved the National Assembly and dismissed the Benazir Bhutto’s government (second term). Since then, he has been kept at the Central Jail, Karachi, Adiala Jail, Rawalpindi, Central Jail, Lahore (at Kot Lakhpat), and the Attock Fort.

He is standing trial in eight references, charging him with corruption, abetting the murder of three, including Mir Murtaza Bhutto and Justice Nizam Siddiqi, and one case of drug trafficking.

The resolution adopted by the PLF declared that Mr Zardari had served the longest term with courage and proved him to be a real political hero of the present time.

“The fact that no government has been able to prove any of the charges levelled against him and he is still behind bars establishes that he is being victimized only because of his relationship with Benazir Bhutto and his commitment to an undiluted democracy,” said the protesters.

PLF President Malik Ghulam Rasool told Dawn that leader of opposition in the Punjab Assembly, Qasim Zia, senators Latif Khosa and Sajjad Bokhari, LHCB President Hafiz Abdur Rahman Ansari and other office-bearers, Punjab Bar Council members, including Aslam Butter, Nausher Khan Langrial, Khawar Mahmood Khatana and Muhammad Ahsan Bhoon, were among a large number of the people who came to the camp.