[420 Girl]

Islamabad - Pakistani authorities today freed an editor friend of Pakistan People's Party co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari, who was jailed nine years ago on charges of drug trafficking, his family said.

Rehmat Shah Afridi, the owner and editor of The Frontier Post and a friend of Zardari, was arrested in April 1999 by the Anti-Narcotics Force for alleged trafficking and possession of drugs. He was released from a prison in Punjab province.

Afridi, who has insisted that he is innocent, was sentenced to death in June 2001. The capital punishment was commuted to life imprisonment in June 2004 by the Lahore High Court, which ruled that trafficking in hashish is not a crime punishable by death. Media organizations have said that the police investigation and initial judicial decisions in Afridi's case were so marred by "irregularities, manipulation and harassment" that the editor should be acquitted and released.

Afridi was the first person in Pakistan's history to get the death penalty on a charge of trafficking hashish. Zardari welcomed Afridi's release while addressing a news conference this evening. He said the release was made possible after he took up the issue with former premier Nawaz Sharif's PML-N party, which rules Punjab province.

Earlier, Zardari had lashed out at PML-N president Shahbaz Sharif for not taking steps to release his friend.

"I asked for the release of my friend on parole, which is not difficult for the Punjab government but Shahbaz Sharif is making excuses," Zardari had said.

Afridi's lawyers had blamed former premier and PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif for concocting a fake drug case because the editor helped slain former premier Benazir Bhutto in 1989 when she was facing a no-confidence move in the National Assembly.

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