Pakistani officials commemorated Benazir Bhutto's birthday Saturday with plans to rename an airport after the former prime minister, build a monument on the site of her assassination and grant clemency to thousands of death row inmates.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced the measures in a speech to Parliament, which observed a minute of silence for the slain leader, who would have turned 55 Saturday.
Bhutto, who was head of the Pakistan People's Party, was assassinated in a bombing and shooting attack outside a December election rally in the garrison town of Rawalpindi. The country was stunned by her death, and Bhutto's party went on to win February elections and form the new governing coalition.
Her birthday was marked in low-key ceremonies at her mausoleum in the town of Naudero, where dozens of somber supporters gathered to offer prayers. Some carried large portraits of Bhutto and demanded the arrest of her killers. Her widower and successor as party leader, Asif Ali Zardari, laid flowers at her grave and recited verses from the Quran.
Gilani, a leader in Bhutto's party, used the occasion to recommend that President Pervez Musharraf clear the nation's death row and commute all death sentences to life in prison. Musharraf was expected to approve the measure.
The mass commutation, which would not prevent future death sentences from being handed down, would be a major victory for human rights activists.
Earlier this week, New York-based Human Rights Watch said about 7,000 people nearly one quarter of all prisoners in Pakistan were awaiting execution. In 2007, 309 prisoners were sentenced to death and 134 were hanged, the group said.
