Murtaza Bhutto Murtaza Bhutto Mir Ghulam Murtaza Bhutto (18 September 1954 – 20 September 1996) was a Pakistani politician. He was the son of former Pakistani PM Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his Iranian Kurdish wife Nusrat. He started the criminal organization Al-Zulfiqar after his father was overthrown and executed in 1979 by General Zia-ul-Haq. He moved to Afghanistan as a fugitive and was sentenced to death in absentia by a military tribunal. He returned to Pakistan in 1993 and was arrested for terrorism on the orders of his sister, then-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Released on bail, Murtaza successfully contested elections to the
Benazir Bhutto retracted this claim. In September 1996, the Taliban secured power in Afghanistan. Bhutto's government was one of only three countries to recognise it as the legitimate Afghan government, a move that further distanced it from its Western allies. Benazir Bhutto was prime minister at a time of great racial tension in Pakistan. Ethnic violence had again broken out in Sindh as muhajir—mobilised by the MQM—rioted in protest at what they saw as their poor treatment. To deal with the unrest, Bhutto permitted her interior minister, Naseerullah Babar, to launch Operation Blue Fox, a violent crackdown on the MQM. By the