ISLAMABAD, Nov 22 (AFP) - The husband of former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto, jailed on corruption charges in 1996, has been released after Supreme Court granted him bail, an official said Monday.
"We have received the release orders," for Asif Zardari, jail official Amanullah Khan told AFP in the southern port city of Karachi.
"He is a free man now and I am going to hospital to deliver release order to him," Khan said.
The court set bail at one million rupees (more than 16,600 dollars) for Zardari, a former senator and minister in Bhutto's cabinet who was imprisoned at the end of his wife's second term, defence lawyer Farooq Naik said.
"The Supreme Court has ordered the release of Asif Zardari ... in a corruption case," he said, adding that bail had already been granted in all the other cases against him, including three murder charges.
"If the government does not come out with any other case or detain him (Zardari), he will be released."
Zardari, who faces seven corruption charges and eight criminal cases, is undergoing hospital treatment in the southern city of Karachi.
A cabinet minister earlier said Zardari would be set free and that the government was hoping for a "positive" response from opposition parties who are trying to force President Pervez Musharraf from power.
"We will respect the court verdict and release him," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told AFP.
"I hope the opposition parties will respond in a positive manner."
But Makhdoom Amin Fahim, vice president of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), denied any deal had been cut with the government.
"The party's agenda is the democratisation of the country's policy ... it cannot, indeed will not, enter into any understanding with the regime," Fahim said in a statement.
Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999.
Bhutto, who governed Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and 1993 to 1996 and now lives in self-exile in London, told the Dubai-based Aryone television channel that she "had been waiting for this moment for the last eight years".
Meanwhile Zardari himself refused to comment on the court's decision.
"I will not comment until and unless I get the release order," a spokesman quoted him as saying. "I have waited for eight long years, so there is no harm in waiting for some more time."
Another defence lawyer for Zardari and parliamentary leader of the PPP, Aitzaz Ahsan, said Zardari should have been set free long ago.
"It is redressal of injustice which was long overdue," Ahsan told AFP.
"Zardari has already been granted bail in 11 cases while acquitted in three cases," he said.
Party official Munir Ahmad Khan said: "Zardari has suffered eight years and 18 days' imprisonment and not a single court has so far held him guilty in any criminal and corruption case."
11/22/2004 17:18 GMT - AFP