Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was the Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1973 to 1977, after serving as President from 1971 to 1973, and the founder of Pakistan People's Party.
A Sindhi landowner, Bhutto was educated at Oxford and Berkeley, and called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn. Entering politics, he became a cabinet minister at 30, and was appointed Foreign Minister in 1963, as a protégé of military ruler Ayub Khan. Falling out over the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965, Bhutto parted ways with Ayub in 1966. He hastily wrote The Myth of Independence a year later, his seminal work on Pakistan's foreign policy.
Following another war with India and the secession of Bangladesh in 1971 (for which Bhutto's detractors hold him partially responsible), Bhutto became President of Pakistan the same year. He passed the country's current constitution in 1973, and founded Pakistan's nuclear programme, but was also blamed for persecuting his political opponents, as well as economic mismanagement.
Bhutto was deposed in a military coup in 1977, and sentenced to death by the Supreme Court in 1979, for authorising the murder of a party dissident. He wrote If I Am Assassinated during his incarceration, smuggling the manuscript out of his jail cell. He was executed on 4 April, 1979. Witness to Splendour, a compilation of Bhutto's testimony before the courts, was published posthumously.
"If the people wanted my head I would bow without demur. If I had lost the confidence or respect of the people I would not want to live. The tragedy of the drama is that the very opposite is true."- Zulfiqar Ali BHutto in a letter to his daughter.