ISLAMABAD, Dec 18: Former prime minister and Chairperson of Pakistan People’s Party, Benazir Bhutto has urged the international community to condemn and confront state sponsored perversion of justice in Pakistan so as to protect innocent citizens against state sponsored crimes.

Many Pakistanis have fled into exile rather than kill their conscience by lying and committing perjury to sentence an innocent person, she said in a letter address to the United Nations Rapporteur on Judges and Judiciary, paying tributes to such persons for fighting for a cause higher than themselves.

According to PPP media cell the letter was delivered to Dato Param Cumaraswamy, UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers in his office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The former prime minister said justice is a universal value and that the death of justice in Pakistan for members of the PPP on grounds of political dissent, its denial for women in certain cases and for members of the minority communities should ‘awaken our conscience‘.

Pointing out that Pakistan was today a front line state in the war against terrorism, she said that this war can only be won when ‘the skeletons in the cupboard‘ are allowed out and finally laid to rest.

“This can be done when we the global community has the courage to confront state sponsored perversion of justice to defend the innocent against state sponsored crimes”, she wrote to the UN.

Elaborating ‘skeletons in the cupboard’ she drew the attention of the UN to a recent interview of the former Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Nasim Hasan Shah in which he had confessed that the hanging of the former prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was perversion of justice carried out by the state.

“The remarks of the judge add more evidence to Mr Bhutto’s innocence and are worthy of further examination and further investigation”. She said “due process of law was repeatedly violated in my father’s case and so many before and after relating to political leaders. “The man who was supposed to be the target of the murder conspiracy is still alive. The sentence for conspiracy, for which my father was charged, did not carry the death penalty as per Pakistan‘s penal code yet he was sentenced to death”.

“It is the conspiracy to murder prime minister Bhutto which must be investigated by those who are concerned about the rule of law”, her letter to the UN Rapporteur said.

Terrorism: Meanwhile the former premier asked the younger generation not to accept “no” for an answer nor accept discrimination, prejudice and intolerance. Only those who have the courage have the good luck to win.