KARACHI: June 15: PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto and her spouse Asif Ali Zardari have condemned the arrest of MPA Zahid Bhurguri and his implication in ATA cases and demanded his immediate release. PPP leader Zahid Bhurgari was whisked away by security personnel soon after addressing a public meeting in Hyderabad on Sunday. A day earlier Zahid had forcefully denounced the provincial budget in the assembly.

In a statement, Ms Bhutto said that the arrest of Mr Bhurgari on charges of terrorism was a blatant case of political victimization.

The statement recalled that PPP negotiations with the regime broke down when the PPP refused to accept the condition that Ms Bhutto should abdicate leadership of the PPP, stay in exile until after the elections of 2007, and accept the seventeenth amendment. Since then the regime had unleashed a reign of terror in which Pir Mukarram was sentenced, MPAs Shamim Ara and Farheen Mohgul were harassed, Ms Bhutto’s constituency was once again delimited, the PPP districts in Sindh broken and PPP mayors dismissed.

Ms Bhutto said that such tactics would not deter the opposition members who she said would continue their struggle for democracy.

Asif Zardari, who was shifted to home from a hospital in Dubai on Monday afternoon, said in a statement that certain elements in the regime allegedly having dubious character had launched a vicious campaign against the PPP workers, who were being subjected to brutal torture by police and private armies in Sindh.

Senator Zardari said the PPP workers, including he himself had spent decades in jails and faced false and fabricated cases and offered sacrifices but there was not a single person in the regime who could face such cases.

General Secretary of the PPP Sindh chapter Nafees Siddiqui said that the arrest of Mr Bhurgari under Anti-Terrorism Act was a naked exploitation of the ‘war on terror’ by the supporters of Taliban and Al-Qaeda in the government ranks.

He recalled that recently thousands of innocent and law-abiding PPP workers were booked under the ATA law in Lahore, while elderly party leader and Human Rights activist Jam Saqi was also implicated in similar case, which exposes the real intentions of the regime to pat on the back of extremists and let lose a reign of terror on the liberal and democratic forces.