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Islamabad: A Pakistani court acquitted the widower of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto of a decade-old drug-smuggling charge on Monday, his lawyer said.
Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto's husband and political successor after her assassination in December, leads a coalition government formed after Bhutto's party won a February election.
He was accused of drug trafficking in 1997 by the government of then prime minister Nawaz Sharif, whose party came second in February and joined Zardari's coalition.
Latif Khosa, Zardari's lawyer, said he had asked a court in the eastern city of Lahore to acquit his client because the charge was politically motivated and had not been proven.
"I argued before the judge that this case, like the other cases, was meant to politically defame Mr Zardari," Khosa told Reuters.
"I told the court that dragging out this case would be an abuse of the law. It's fake and fabricated. I pleaded to the court that this black chapter be closed and Mr Zardari be respectfully acquitted. The court accepted my plea."
He said there were no more cases outstanding against Zardari.
Courts have in recent weeks cleared Zardari of several criminal cases including one of conspiracy to kill his estranged brother-in-law, Murtaza Bhutto, whom police shot dead
in 1996.
Several corruption cases against Zardari in Pakistani courts and abroad have also been quashed under an ordinance introduced by President Pervez Musharraf late last year which
granted amnesty to Bhutto, Zardari and several other politicians.
Zardari, who served as a cabinet minister in his wife's cabinet in the 1990s, spent a total of 11 years in jail but was never convicted.
Sharif was a bitter enemy of both Bhutto and Zardari in the 1990s but he formed a coalition government with Bhutto's party after the February elections.
He pulled his party's ministers out of the cabinet on May 13 after failing to resolve a disagreement with Zardari over the restoration of judges sacked by Musharraf last year.
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