Chaos at hearing of governor’s assassin

Pakistanis chant slogans in support of arrested bodyguard Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, the alleged killer of Punjab’s governor Salman Taseer, while they wait for him outside an anti-terrorist court in Rawalpindi yesterday

Chaos engulfed a court hearing for the alleged assassin of a liberal Pakistani politician yesterday as Islamist protestors forced police to backtrack on plans to relocate the session.
The grinning policeman, who confessed to murdering Salman Taseer for his progressive views, has been hailed a hero by the powerful religious right, highlighting how deep  the conservative grip on the nuclear-armed country is.
Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri was showered with rose petals for a second day as he arrived at an anti-terror court in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, more than seven hours after media first gathered in anticipation of the event.
The judge had ordered Qadri to appear after he was charged over Tuesday’s assassination, and several hundred lawyers and madrassa students descended on the premises in a show of support for the 26-year-old.
As the crowd became increasingly vocal, Islamabad authorities said that they wanted to relocate the hearing to the capital, where TV footage showed a makeshift court created at a heavily protected municipal building.
"The Islamabad administration has issued a notification to conduct a hearing in the Mumtaz Qadri case in Islamabad,” administration official Amir Ahmad Ali said, declining to announce when and where exactly Qadri would appear.
An armoured car was then seen arriving, presumably with Qadri inside, but in Rawalpindi the crowd prevented the judge from leaving the premises.
"We requested the judge that legally he cannot go to Islamabad to hear the accused and he accepted our request,” lawyer Malik Waheed Anjum told reporters.
"The judge ordered Islamabad police to present the accused in his court in Rawalpindi,” he added.
An AFP reporter described how an armoured vehicle drew up outside the premises, showered with rose petals, before Qadri was escorted inside, his face cloaked from view.
Members of the main ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to which Punjab provincial governor Taseer belonged, earlier alluded that his killing was part of a wider plot, slamming security failures that led to his death.
It was the most high-profile assassination in Pakistan since ex-PPP prime minister Benazir Bhutto was killed in December 2007. Horrified moderates have warned that liberal voices are being silenced.
Qadri told police he killed the governor to silence his efforts to reform laws that make defaming the Prophet Muhammad punishable by death.
"The martyrdom of Mr Salman Taseer is a conspiracy against Pakistan and Pakistani institutions,” said Imtiaz Safdar Warraich, a junior minister in PPP-led government, which lost its majority shortly before the assassination.
"The people behind this assassination should be exposed immediately... There was a serious security lapse,” he said.
Questions have been asked about why no policeman or guard apparently made an attempt to overpower the 26-year-old shooter.
"Telling colleagues about his (Qadri’s) intention, asking to be arrested alive and the silent spectator role of policemen deployed at the crime scene raise too many questions,” Warraich said.
PPP Law Minister Babar Awan criticised a "huge criminal security failure”.
"The protection of the constitutional head of a province was entrusted to murderers. Why were those declared a security risk assigned to VIP duty?”
Meanwhile, an investigator said yesterday that the supervising police officer of Qadri said he had asked for his removal from all sensitive security duties because of his extreme religious views,.
A senior police official investigating the case said Qadri had been declared a "security hazard” and his supervising officer had written to the Punjab Home Department and said he should be removed from VIP detail.
"He had views like an extremist and that was the reason (for his removal),” the official said.
Qadri’s supervisor, Nasir Durrani, is now heading the Punjab government’s investigation into the murder.
Investigations are under way to determine if other Elite Force police officers at the scene of the killing were involved because they had not acted quickly enough, said the investigator.
Raising the spectre of deeper turmoil, senior officials are suggesting that Taseer’s killing was politically motivated, rather than the work of a lone religious fanatic.
"We believe that this political murder is being given another spin and investigations are being side-tracked,” state minister for communications Imtiaz Safdar Waraich told reporters after visiting Taseer’s grave in his hometown of Lahore.
"It is a conspiracy against Pakistan and its institutions. We (the ruling Pakistan People’s Party) don’t think the investigation is being carried out in the proper and speedy manner it should have been,” he added.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik alluded to a wider conspiracy to destablise Pakistan, which is on the front line of the US-led war on Al Qaeda and where bomb attacks have killed 4,000 people since July 2007.
"We know how much money is being pumped in (to destablise the country) and if we don’t act wisely it will explode like a bomb and we won’t be able to face the consequences,” Malik said.
The blasphemy laws have widespread support in a country that is more than 95% Muslim, and most politicians are loath to be seen as soft on the defence of Islam. Taseer, however, was an outspoken critic.
While some see Qadri as a symbol of religious intolerance, others are treating him like a hero.
A leading mainstream Sunni Muslim group of 500 scholars and clerics praised Qadri and warned other politicians of the same fate if they spoke out against blasphemy laws, which rights campaigners say fuels Islamist extremism.
"Qadri did the right thing and whoever tries to commit this crime (blasphemy), Allah will create more Qadris,” said Ansar Mehmood Minhas, one of 500 lawyers who want to represent the accused assassin free of charge.
White House to help Pakistan fight extremism
The US yesterday said its commitment to helping Pakistan root out violent extremism would not waver, following the assassination of the governor of Punjab province.
The White House added its voice to condolences offered to the family of Governor Salman Taseer on Tuesday by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"This is an individual who had worked hard to promote tolerance and his loss is a great one for Pakistan,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.
"We remain committed to the efforts that the Pakistani government is (taking) and must undertake to root out violent extremism and to bring greater peace and stability to that country and to that region of the world.
On Tuesday, Clinton said she had admired Taseer’s work to promote tolerance and education and described his death as a "great loss.”