Benazir Bhutto was born on June 21, 1953, into a wealthy landowning
family. Her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founded the Pakistan People's
Party (PPP) and was President and later Prime Minister of Pakistan from
1971 to 1977.
After gaining degrees in politics at Harvard and Oxford universities,
she returned to Pakistan in 1977, just before the military seized power
from her father. She inherited the leadership of the PPP after her
father’s execution in 1979 under military ruler General Mohammad
Zia-ul-Haq.
First voted in as Prime Minister in 1988, Bhutto was sacked by the
then-President on corruption charges in 1990. She took power again in
1993 after her successor, Nawaz Sharif, was forced to resign after a row
with the President. Bhutto was no more successful in her second spell as
Prime Minister, and Sharif was back in power by 1996.
In 1999, both Bhutto and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, were sentenced
to five years in jail and fined $8.6 million on charges of taking
kickbacks from a Swiss company hired to fight customs fraud. A higher
court later overturned the conviction as biased. Bhutto, who had made
her husband investment minister during her period in office from 1993 to
1996, was abroad at the time of her conviction and chose not to return
to Pakistan.
In 2006 she joined an Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy with her
arch rival Sharif, but the two disagreed over strategy for dealing with
military President Pervez Musharraf. Bhutto decided it was better to
negotiate with Musharraf, while Sharif refused to have any dealings with
the general.
Bhutto returned to Pakistan in October 2007 from eight years of
self-imposed exile after Musharraf, with whom she had been negotiating
over Pakistan’s transition to civilian-led democracy, granted her
protection from prosecution in old corruption cases.
