Mir Murtaza Bhutto
Mir Murtaza Bhutto was born on September 18,1954. He was the eldest son of Zulfikar and Nusrat Bhutto and it was after his birth that the Bhutto family first moved into their 70 Clifton home, outside which Murtaza was murdered 42 years later.

Murtaza was schooled in Pakistan and later traveled abroad to complete his higher education. He graduated summa cum laude in Government from Harvard in 1976 and later moved on to do graduate work at Oxford's Christ Church.

Murtaza was at Oxford when Zia ul Haq's military regime assassinated his father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in 1979. Prior to his assassination, Murtaza and his brother Shahnawaz embarked on an international campaign to save their father's life, but it was to no avail, and the two brothers continued to resist the military abrogation of the 1973 constitution in exile.

Six years later Murtaza faced another tragedy as his brother Shahnawaz was killed in Nice. He was poisoned and subsequently died under mysterious circumstances, and like his father's death, no one was brought to trial. Shahnawaz's wife, however, was considered a suspect by the French authorities and remained in their custody for sometime until she was allowed to travel to the United States of America, a couple of years later. She was sentenced in absentia for failing to come to the aid of a dying man.

Murtaza spent the next 16 years in exile away from his family and country. In 1993, he contested from exile for a seat in the provincial assembly. Murtaza was a member of the Pakistan People’s Party ever since it was founded by his father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1967. However, the new chairperson, Benazir Bhutto, Murtaza’s elder sister, denied him a ticket, therefore Murtaza decided to contest the elections independently. He was elected and became member of the provincial assembly o Sindh. Upon winning the elections Murtaza returned to Pakistan. He was arrested at the airport and spent the next eight months in jail. Even as he was released, he remained consumed in court cases until his assassination in September of 1996.

Though the cases were trumped up by Zia's regime , no democratic government attempted to dismiss them whether it was Benazir Bhutto's government or Nawaz Sharif's. It was under Benazir's second government that her brother Murtaza, an elected member of the provincial assembly, was killed under the eyes and ears of the state police. On September 20, 1996 Murtaza was shot and fatally wounded in a police ambush along six of his companions. He had just turned 42 two days before. He left behind his wife Ghinwa and his two children Zulfikar Ali 11, and Fatima, 20. Murtaza’s case has been pending in the courts for the last six years all suspects has been awarded bail.

Ghinwa, Murtaza’s widow, was elected to head the Pakistan People’s Party of Shaheed Bhutto, the party that Murtaza Bhutto had founded upon his return to reform the Pakistan People’s Party that was transformed under the leadership of Benazir Bhutto from a party of the poor and down trodden to a party of the rich and the feudals. And the struggle for justice continues.

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