Pakistani governor is killed by bodyguard
Asif Shahzad and Nahal Toosi
Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Victim opposed country’s blasphemy laws


Taseer

ISLAMABAD — The governor of Pakistan’s most dominant province was shot and killed Tuesday by a bodyguard who authorities said was angry about the governor’s opposition to blasphemy laws carrying the death sentence for insulting the Muslim faith.

Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer, regarded as a moderate voice in a country increasingly beset by zealotry, was a close ally of U.S.-backed President Asif Ali Zardari. He is the highest-profile Pakistani political figure to be assassinated since former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto three years ago, and his death underscores the growing danger in this country to those who dare challenge the demands of Islamist extremists.

Taseer was riddled by gunshots while walking to his car after an afternoon meal at Kohsar Market, a shopping center in Islamabad popular with Westerners and wealthy Pakistanis. He was shot in the back, said Shaukat Kayani, a doctor at Poly Clinic Hospital.

Initial reports indicated the suspected gunman, a police commando guarding Taseer, unloaded up to 26 rounds from a Kalashnikov automatic rifle. The gunman could have fired that number of rounds in a matter of seconds.

Other guards then forced the police commando to the ground, according to police and hospital officials.

“It was one shot first and then a burst,” said R.A. Khan, a witness who was drinking coffee at the time.

An intelligence official interrogating the suspect said the commando had been planning the assassination since learning three days ago that he would be deployed with the governor. Police were trying to determine how he was assigned to Taseer’s security detail Tuesday and whether he’d had any help.

The death also is a blow to Zardari, Bhutto’s widower whose ruling party is struggling to retain power after the defection of a key ally. The country’s leading opposition party on Tuesday gave the government a three-day deadline to accept a list of demands to avoid collapse.

The renewed political turmoil bodes ill for military action against Muslim extremists that the U.S. believes is key to success in neighboring Afghanistan, analysts say.

Pakistan’s powerful army could use the lack of political consensus to avoid operations that clash with its perceived strategic interests.

Taseer, 66, publicly vented his opposition — even using Twitter — to Pakistan’s harsh blasphemy laws that effectively order death for anyone convicted of insulting Islam.

Although courts typically overturn convictions and no executions have been carried out, rights activists say the laws are used to settle rivalries and persecute religious minorities.

The laws came under renewed international scrutiny late last year when a 45-year-old Christian woman, Asia Bibi, was sentenced to death for allegedly insulting Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

Taseer called for granting Bibi a pardon, a stance that earned him death threats from Islamists.

The guards assigned to his security detail Tuesday were provided by the Punjab province government, which is headed by the rival Pakistan Muslim League-N party, according to Interior Minister Rehman Malik.

Officials identified the suspect as Mumtaz Qadri, a 26-year-old from Rawalpindi. They said Qadri became a police constable in 2003 and transferred to an elite squad after commando training in 2008.

Jehangir Khan, a witness who saw the suspect after he was detained by the police, said that the man was boasting about the act, saying, “Hey, you all, come and see, I have killed a blasphemer. You come and join me. Chant Allahu Akbar (God is great)!”

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