18th Amendment Bill passage celebration: Zardari awards special remission to prisoners

To celebrate the passage of the 18th Constitutional Amendment Bill in the National Assembly President Asif Ali Zardari on Friday awarded special remission to all prisoners, by remitting one fourth of their total sentences.
Spokesperson to the President former Senator Farhatullah Babar said that the President granted the remission under powers available to him under Article 45 of the Constitution and on the advice of the Prime Minister. "The President shall have power to grant pardon, reprieve and respite, and to remit, suspend or commute any sentence passed by any court, tribunal or other authority," Article 45 says.
Total remission has been given to the female convict prisoners who are 60 years of age or above and have undergone at least 1/3rd of substantive sentences imprisonment. Male prisoners 65 years of age or above and have undergone at least 1/3rd of imprisonment, have also been given total remission in their sentences.
The special remission is not for those who have been convicted of crimes such as murder, espionage, anti-state activities, terrorism, kidnapping and abduction for ransom, robbery and dacoity. "Let the prisoners also participate in celebrating this national achievement of democratising the Constitution and banishing from it the vestiges of dictatorship," the President remarked while signing the summary for special remission.
The President said that it was a momentous day in the history of the country as the democratic Constitution given in 1973 by the political leaders of the country by Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the PPP had bounced back shedding undemocratic interventions. He said that the democratic forces had reasserted themselves proving once again that in the final analysis it is the force of the people that counts.-PR