ISLAMABAD, Nov 24: The late Benazir Bhutto won praise on Thursday for her international stature from the Supreme Court that termed 'petty' allegations by her critics that she had rushed into a controversial deal over the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) that was later declared illegal.

“The PPP leader in her book (Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West) had never shown weakness rather stated (that) it was Musharraf who ran after the (NRO) deal,” Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry said during a full-court hearing.

The court was hearing the government's review petition against its ruling of declaring the NRO non-existent.

“You cannot attribute such things to her. It's history. She was never interested in the deal rather there was another person who wanted to become president at that time,” the chief justice said.

Ms Bhutto had joined the lawyers' long march and even given a protest call in Lahore from the house of the present Punjab governor, he said, adding: “Although we are not politicians, reading books is our right.”

He said: “It will not be fair to equate her with such petty things. When historians would write history, it would be evident who did what. She was the daughter of a person who never accepted wrong things.”

The court announced that it would consider on Friday in the presence of the government's counsel certain documents he had declared showed an attempt after 25 years to hold trial of graves of leaders. The documents were submitted Babar Awan but were not accepted by the court.

It allowed review petitions filed by former attorney general Malik Mohammad Qayyum against strictures passed against him by the court.

The court asked the authorities to proceed as mandated in law without being influenced by the observations made in the NRO judgment under review.

Review petitions of the National Accountability Bureau's for additional prosecutor general Abdul Baseer Qureshi, prosecutor general Dr Danishwar Malik and advocate on record Raja Abdul Ghafoor were also accepted on passionate grounds.

Mr Awan argued that petitions against the NRO had been filed before the court before the return to the country of the former prime minister in 2007 but none of them mentioned what relief had been granted to her.

The court again inquired why the federation was defending a black law that had already been declared 'non-est', meaning it never was in the field.

“It would have been understandable if any member of the party had come forward with a grievance before the court,” it said.

The counsel argued that the verdict had ventured far beyond the pleadings of the parties. What had not been pleaded for could not be granted, he said.

He said questions of facts had been decided without giving the government an opportunity to rebut.

The chief justice said certain material was before the court when the decision was taken.

“If the entire law is declared void, the entire structure would fall,” Justice Saqib Nisar said, adding natural consequences would flow in declaring any law as void.

When the chief justice asked the counsel to conclude, he said he was being asked so for the third time which was alarming because it might result in a 'no' or 'yes' as often happened in special incidents of life. The word 'no' only occurred in movies, the chief justice replied.

He said parliament had never adopted the law and asked if the prime minister had not been in a position to take benefit from it. “But he did not opt for it and went for an appeal in the Islamabad High Court.

“Similarly, the interior minister (Rehman Malik) contested cases in the courts of law, a thing on which the federation should claim pride and which will be written in the history,” the chief justice said.

“The federation consists of the chief executive, who did not hide behind the stinking law rather considered it as a bad law,” the court said.

It said Ms Bhutto was not interested in the law and she never took any benefit from it under Section 33A of the NRO.

People who had struck the deal under the NRO were also repenting, the court said.

Mr Awan also said that, God willing, no ultra-constitutional power could remove the democratic set-up in the country that had seen a series of martial law regimes in the past.