Ghulam Murtaza Bhutto (Sindhi: مير غلام مرتضيٰ ڀٽو‎; Urdu: مُرتضٰی بُھٹّو, 18 September 1954 – 20 September 1996) was a Pakistani politician and leader of al-Zulfiqar, a Pakistani left-wing militant organization.[1][2] The son of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, he earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a master's degree from the University of Oxford. Murtaza founded al-Zulfiqar after his father was overthrown and executed in 1979 by the military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq. In 1981, he claimed responsibility for the murder of conservative politician Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi, and the hijacking of a Pakistan International Airlines airplane from Karachi, during which a hostage was killed.[3][4] In exile in Afghanistan, Murtaza was sentenced to death in absentia by a military tribunal. He returned to Pakistan in 1993 and was arrested for terrorism on the orders of his sister, then-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Released on bail, Murtaza successfully contested elections to the Sindh Provincial Assembly, becoming a vocal critic of Benazir and her husband Asif Ali Zardari. After increasing tensions between the two, he was shot dead along with six associates in a police encounter near his home in Karachi on 20 September 1996.[5][6] Benazir's government was dismissed a month later by President Farooq Leghari, primarily citing Murtaza's death and corruption.[7] Zardari was arrested and indicted for Murtaza's murder,[8] but acquitted in 2008.[9][10] Murtaza's own faction of his father's Pakistan People's Party–Shaheed Bhutto, remains active in politics.