Former Pakistan PM wanted on corruption charges News
Former Pakistan PM wanted on corruption charges

[JURIST] International arrest warrants have been issued for former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto [BBC profile] and husband Asif Ali Zardari [BBC profile] on charges of corruption in a number of unspecified cases stemming from the former prime minister's term in office from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. Interpol [official website] issued "red notices" Thursday, which serve to inform other countries that arrest warrants exist for the pair, but leave it up to individual countries to take action. The exiled prime minister and her husband reside in Britain and the United Arab Emirates, but are currently on a lecture tour in the United States. Bhutto informed reporters [press release] at a press conference Thursday that they plan to return to Pakistan to face the charges. Zardari, a senior politician from the Pakistan Peoples Party [party website], spent eight years in detention on corruption charges before being released on bail last year, and both Bhutto and Zardari have been convicted in absentia on separate corruption charges. Pakistani officials are also pursuing a case involving money laundering charges in Switzerland. Bhutto was convicted in 2003 in Switzerland, but the conviction was thrown out on appeal. AP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.