Pakistan Peoples Party Chairperson, Benazir Bhutto has welcomed the release of PPP Vice Chairman and former speaker of the National Assembly Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani after a five-year ordeal following his bail by the Lahore High Court.
The former prime minister, in a statement on Sunday, paid glowing tributes to Gillani for facing the trials and tribulations with courage and fortitude. She said that Gillani's example demonstrated that the followers of the PPP had a moral compass in defending the principles of their Party following in the footsteps of Quaid-e-Awam Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
Benazir said that she felt proud of PPP workers, who had honour, character, integrity and courage to defend the principles of freedom and equality in a country, which had remained under military dictatorship for long periods.
By refusing to bow to the pressures of imprisonment and the temptations to leave the party in exchange for an end to his imprisonment while enduring the rigors of prison for nearly six years Yousuf Raza Gillani has illuminated the path of principled politics, she said.
Gillani was sentenced to ten years in jail by the Rawalpindi accountability court for allegedly making illegal appointments as Speaker in the National Assembly during the PPP government 1993-96.
She said that for the PPP it was clear that Gillani's incarceration was politically motivated to break the PPP as, according to reports, others charged with similar allegations, who joined the ruling party were acquitted.
Yousuf Gillani was first arrested on February 10, 2001, without allegation. He was kept on physical remand in the degrading conditions of a National Accountability Bureau (NAB) police station for 90 days, the maximum period a person can be held, to break his spirit.
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