NEW DELHI, May 21 (RAPSI) - A special Anti-Terrorism Court granted bail Monday to former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf in connection with the murder of deceased prime minister Benazir Bhutto, according to a Dawn News report.

Along with the murder of Bhutto, Musharraf has been charged with the illegal arrests of Supreme Court judges during a state of emergency in 2007, as well as with the murder of Baloch Tribe nationalist leader Akbar Khan Bugti. The former president will remain under house arrest in his Chak Shahzad farmhouse near Islamabad as bail was granted only in regard to the Bhutto murder case.

Musharraf rejected the charges as "politically motivated."

Bhutto was assassinated in a bombing during a pre-election rally in Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007. The charges against Musharraf are based on the testimony of the former city chief of police, who told the investigators that Bhutto's guards had been called off duty on Musharraf's orders.

On April 18 the court issued an arrest warrant for Musharraf as part of the state of emergency case and placed him under house arrest. Later, he was also placed under formal arrest over the Bhutto murder case.

During the Monday hearing, the special prosecutor of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) argued that "Gen. Musharraf would escape from the country if the court releases him on bail," but the court nevertheless released the general on $20,000 bail.

Musharraf came to power in 1999 as a result of a military coup and was forced by the opposition to resign in 2008. He returned to Pakistan in March 2013 to run for parliament, but the election commissions of the four districts where he sought to be registered as a candidate refused to allow him to run, due to the charges brought against him.