Ms Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's first woman prime minister, was sentenced in absentia to five years' jail for corruption yesterday by a special court she said was set up to end her political career.
Her flamboyant senator husband, Mr Asif Zardari, already in jail for corruption, received the same sentence and the couple was fined $8.6 million for allegedly receiving bribes from a Swiss firm.
Ms Bhutto, twice elected prime minister and twice fired for corruption, was not in court to hear the verdict, which had been expected next week.
The judge said that Ms Bhutto, daughter of the late prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was disqualified from holding any public office. She denies all charges that she and her husband stole up to $100 million during two spells in office and said that the trial masked a government attempt to end her political career.
The verdict was given in a court in Rawalpindi by an ehteseab or accountability bench named after the bureau which the Prime Minister, Mr Nawaz Sharif, set up to clamp down on corruption. Ms Bhutto, who is in London, told the BBC she was traumatised by the case.
"Proving innocence before a judge whose father hanged my father, before a judge who is a close family associate of Nawaz Sharif . . . no, that judge is not impartial, he's not fair, he's not doing justice. He's a crony," she told BBC television.
"I have been absolutely traumatised by this trial. To be so charged is painful beyond belief," Ms Bhutto said.