Benazir Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto (born 21 June 1953 in Karachi) is a Pakistani politician who became the first elected woman to lead a post-colonial Muslim state. Bhutto was twice elected Prime Minister of Pakistan. She was sworn in for the first time in 1988 but removed from office 20 months later under orders of then-president Ghulam Ishaq Khan on grounds of alleged corruption. Bhutto was re-elected in 1993 but was again removed by President Farooq Leghari in 1996, on similar charges.

Bhutto went into self-imposed exile in Dubai in 1998, where she remained until she returned to Pakistan on October 18, 2007, after reaching an understanding with General Musharraf by which she was granted amnesty and all corruption charges were withdrawn.[1] On 3 November 2007 she criticized General Musharraf for declaring a state of emergency. On 9 November 2007, she was placed under house arrest by command of General Musharraf, in order to prevent her from speaking at a political rally. Gatherings of any kind had been outlawed under the declared emergency rule. Hours later she was released from this sentence.

She is the eldest child of former premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a Pakistani of Sindhi extraction, and Begum ("Lady") Nusrat Bhutto, a Pakistani of Iranian-Kurdish extraction. Benazir studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the University of Oxford, and has a Harvard University degree. Her paternal grandfather was Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto who came to Larkana Sindh before partition from his native town of Bhatto Kalan which is situated in the Indian state of Haryana.