World Notes Pakistan

Benazir Bhutto, 33, was back at her Karachi home last week after 25 days in prison. In an interview with TIME, the charismatic leader of the opposition to Pakistan President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq sounded more bitter and less certain than when she was firing up huge crowds with calls for national elections. But she was still defiant, blaming the government for the fact that 40 people have been killed in recent disturbances. "This regime is prepared to shoot at people quite mercilessly," she said. Nonetheless, Bhutto appeared shaken by her imprisonment, and by the failure of the millions who cheered her return from exile last spring to protest her arrest. She indirectly conceded that this raised doubts about her ability to change the Zia regime's course and that the government could arrest her anytime it wished. "How long I'm free I don't know," she said. "That depends on their whim."