Pakistani Punjab governor killer sentenced to death

ISLAMABAD — A Pakistani court found a police commando guilty of murder and sentenced him to death for killing a liberal governor who had urged reform of a blasphemy law, a defence lawyer said.
Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, one of Punjab governor Salman Taseer's bodyguards, on Saturday was charged with terrorism and murdering the man he was supposed to be protecting on an Islamabad street on January 4 this year.
Qadri confessed to killing Taseer, saying he objected to the politician's calls to amend the blasphemy law, which mandates the death penalty for those convicted of defaming the Prophet Mohammed.
"The court has awarded my client with death. The court announced the death sentence for him," Shuja-ur-Rehman, one of Qadri's lawyers, told AFP by telephone.
Judge Pervez Ali Shah announced the verdict at an anti-terrorism court behind closed doors in the high-security Adiyala prison in Rawalpindi, the lawyer said.
Dozens of people rallied outside the prison where the verdict was announced, chanting slogans in support of Qadri, an AFP photographer said.
"The judge has also ordered him to pay a fine of 200,000 rupees ($2,300) each," the lawyer said.
Shuja-ur-Rehman said soon he will lodge an appeal in a high court against the verdict.
The killing of the reformist Taseer was the most high-profile political assassination in Pakistan since former prime minister Benazir Bhutto died in a gun and suicide attack in December 2007.
Taseer had supported a Christian mother of five sentenced to death in November 2010 for alleged blasphemy in the central province of Punjab.
A Catholic Pakistani government minister who had vowed to defy death threats over his opposition to Islamic blasphemy laws was shot dead in March, 2011.
The Catholic politician, who had complained of death threats, was gunned down as he left his mother's home in a residential area of Islamabad.


Taseer was an outspoken critic of Pakistan's blasphemy law, which mandates the death penalty and is often used in poor, rural areas to settle personal scores.


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


Outside the jail, where the hearing was held for security reasons, several hundred supporters of Qadri blocked the road and chanted slogans denouncing the sentence.


"By punishing one Mumtaz Qadri, you will produce a thousand Mumtaz Qadris!" one man shouted through a megaphone.


Others recited verses from the Koran, as members of the hardline Sunni Tehreek religious group waved their party's green and yellow flags.


One Qadri supporter, wiping tears from his face, said: "We don't accept this. We don't accept this."


Additional police were deployed at the jail gate to prevent any possible break-in. After Qadri was sentenced, the judge left through the back door.