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
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto elections in 1977 by a wide margin. However, the opposition alleged widespread vote rigging, and violence escalated across the country. On 5 July that same year, Bhutto was deposed by his appointed army chief General Zia-ul-Haq in a military coup before being controversially tried and executed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 1979 for authorising the murder of a political opponent. While Bhutto remains a contentious figure in Pakistan's history, his party, the PPP, remains among Pakistan's largest, his daughter Benazir Bhutto was twice elected Prime Minister, and his son-in-law and Benazir's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, served as President.