Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

January 5, 1928 – April 4, 1979

Pakistani politician who founded the Pakistan Peoples Party and led Pakistan as president and prime minister from 1971 to 1977. General Zia overthrew him and he was executed in 1979.

Who else was alive Wikipedia

Biography

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was born in 1928 near Larkana into a prominent Sindhi family. He studied at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley, then at Christ Church, Oxford, lectured in international law at Southampton and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1953.

He entered the cabinet in 1958 as Pakistan's youngest minister and held several ministries under Ayub Khan before becoming foreign minister in 1963. He pressed for the 1965 operation in Kashmir that led to war with India and was dismissed after the Tashkent Declaration. In 1967 he founded the Pakistan Peoples Party on a socialist platform; it swept West Pakistan in the 1970 election, and the failure to agree on a transfer of power with the Awami League was followed by civil war and the loss of East Pakistan.

He became president in December 1971, negotiated the Simla Agreement with India in 1972 and, under the constitution adopted in 1973, became prime minister. His government nationalised major industries, began Pakistan's nuclear programme, hosted the 1974 Islamic Summit in Lahore and recognised Bangladesh, but also used the army against an insurgency in Balochistan.

Charges of rigging in the 1977 election led to mass protests, and General Zia-ul-Haq deposed him on 5 July 1977. Tried for authorising the murder of a political opponent's father, he was hanged in April 1979; in 2024 Pakistan's Supreme Court found that he had not received a fair trial. His daughter Benazir Bhutto later led the party and twice served as prime minister.