Pak hangs man who killed governor over call to reform blasphemy law

Mangalore Today News Network

Islamabad, Feb 29, 2016: Protests have erupted in different parts of Pakistan after Mumtaz Qadri, the self-confessed killer of former Punjab governor Salman Taseer was hanged at Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail on Monday morning.

Main roads were blocked as news spread of the hanging with supporters of different religious parties coming out on the streets to protest the hanging.

Aijaz Qadri of the Sunni Tehreek, a sectarian organisation which had launched a campaign to free Mumtaz Qadri, said that his party was very angry with the death. “We will express our sorrow and anger in the coming days,” he told the media, adding that he had asked all shops and schools to be closed on Monday in respect for Mumtaz Qadri.

“Qadri was hanged at around 4:30 am,” senior police officer Rizwan Omar Gondal told Reuters by telephone

Qadri, a former police commando, assassinated Taseer in Islamabad’s Kohsar Market on January 4, 2011 for his support to a blasphemy accused.

Taseer had championed the cause of a Christian woman sentenced to death in a blasphemy case that arose out of a personal dispute. Taseer had said the law was being misused and should be reformed

Late in 2011, an anti-terrorism court handed down a double death sentence to Qadri for murder and terrorism. The sentence was appealed and upheld by the Supreme Court late last year. A review petition of Qadri was also turned down by the top court on December 14 last year, leaving him with the last option of to file a clemency appeal to the President. The plea was turned down last week.

More than 100 people are charged with blasphemy each year in predominantly Muslim Pakistan, many of them Christians and other minorities.

Conviction of blasphemy carries a death sentence, although no one has yet been executed for the charge.

Controversy over the law has exposed the growing gap between religious conservatives and liberals in Pakistan, with hard-line religious leaders considering Taseer a blasphemer himself for even criticising the law.

Some lawyers showered Qadri with rose petals when he first arrived in court days after the killing. The judge who first convicted him was forced to flee the country after death threats.