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Benazir Bhutto 1988
Punjab, Pakistan
November 11, 1988
The images of Ali Bhutto, Benazir's father and former Prime Minister, is displayed at a Bhutto campaign rally.
Bhutto, the eldest child of former Pakistan President and Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, found herself placed under house arrestin the wake of her father's imprisonment and subsequent execution in 1979. In 1984 she became the leader in exile of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), her father's party, though she was unable to make her political presence felt in Pakistan until after the death of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.
On 16 November 1988 Benazir's PPP won the largest bloc of seats in the National Assembly. Bhutto was sworn in as Prime Minister in December, at age 35 she became the first woman to head the government of a Muslim-majority state in modern times.
She was removed from office 20 months later under orders of then-president Ghulam Ishaq Khan for 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, until she returned to Pakistan on October 2007, after General Musharraf granted her amnesty and all corruption charges withdrawn.
