Benazir's children call verdict 'disappointing, unacceptable'

"SMBB case decision is disappointing & unacceptable," chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto Zardari tweeted minutes after the decision was announced in Adiyala Jail. "Release of terrorists not only unjust but also dangerous. PPP will explore legal options.

"10 years later and we still await justice," Benazir's daughter Aseefa Bhutto Zardari said. "Abettors punished but those truly guilty of my mothers murder roam free."

She went on to add that "there will be no justice till Pervez Musharraf answers for his crimes."

Similarly, Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari called for the former military dictator's arrest. "Musharraf ordered crime scene washed & doors locked trapping SMBB vehicle inside." Sharing her sister's sentiments, Bakhtawar Bhutto-Zardari also expressed displeasure with the verdict, saying: "Police men arrested but actual terrorists acquitted #Shame". Earlier in the day, ATC Rawalpindi sentenced two senior police officers to 17 years in prison as per Sections 119 and 201 of the Pakistan Penal Code but acquitted five others who were accused of assassinating the former prime minister.

Former president Gen (retd) Pervaiz Musharraf was declared a proclaimed offender as he failed to appear before the court. During the course of the proceedings, seven challans of the case were presented and eight judges and three courts were changed.

Meanwhile, the first female prime minister of a Muslim nation, Pakistan's slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was an aristocrat embraced by the poor who said her own life mirrored Pakistan's "turbulence, its tragedies and its triumphs".

Hailed by the West as a moderate in the world's only Islamic nuclear power, Bhutto was a shrewd but divisive figure at home where

she was mired in corruption allegations and despised by religious extremists. "I didn't choose this life, it chose me," she wrote in her 1988 memoir, "Daughter of the East".

The 54-year-old graduate of Oxford and Harvard was killed December 27, 2007, little more than two months after returning from exile as she campaigned to return to power.

The most definitive accounts of Bhutto's death show an assassin shot her in the neck and then blew himself up, killing 24 people.

She was laid to rest beside her father, former premier Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged in 1979 on the orders of military dictator Zia ul-Haq, propelling his daughter to carry on his legacy.

Nearly ten years later, showers of fresh rose petals over the grave show how deeply she is still mourned in her family's power base in Sindh province — revered almost as a saint rather than a politician.

Hundreds of devotees visit daily — thousands on her birthday and death anniversary — lighting incense and reciting the Koran inside the white-marbled family shrine reminiscent of India's Taj Mahal. Benazir Bhutto was born in 1953 — six years after Pakistan was created as a Muslim homeland out of British-ruled India — the eldest of four children in a powerful family dynasty in Sindh.

Like her father, Benazir's gaze was turned to the West from an early age, although she nonetheless accepted an arranged marriage to businessman Asif Ali Zardari, with whom she had three children.

Bhutto headed to Britain after Zia deposed her father. From exile, she maintained a firm grip on the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), sometimes to the resentment of allies who believed she ran it as a family fiefdom.

After Zia died in a mysterious plane crash in 1988, Bhutto at the age of just 35 -became the first female prime minister of an Islamic country.