A Pakistani court yesterday convicted and sentenced a police officer to death for the killing of a liberal governor earlier this year, a murder that led to fears the country was buckling under the weight of extremism.
The January murder in broad daylight of Punjab provincial governor Salman Taseer by one of his police guards was alarming in itself, but what came afterward perhaps even more so: Lawyers showered his killer, Mumtaz Qadri, with flowers, thousands demonstrated in his defense and even mainstream politicians did not loudly condemn the killing.
Qadri has told his trial that Taseer deserved to die because of his criticism of Pakistani laws that mandate the death sentence for insulting Islam.
Photo: AFP
Taseer, a member of the country’s ruling party, wanted amendments in the law and had defended a Christian woman sentenced to death under it.
Qadri was convicted and sentenced in an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi close to Islamabad, said three officials at the jail who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. The trial, which began a month after the killing in January, was held in a prison and was closed to the media.
Under Pakistan law, Qadri can appeal. Death sentences have been rarely carried out in Pakistan in recent years.
Pakistan, whose 180 million people are almost 95 percent Muslim, has seen an alarming spread in violent Islamist extremism since 2007.
The security forces have fought back, but thousands of government officials, Christians, Shiites and scores of police and soldiers have been killed in assassinations and suicide bombings.
Taseer was a wealthy, polarizing figure, and one of few Pakistani officials to consistently oppose extremism.
Members of his family have continued speaking out against militancy, and in August, Taseer’s adult son was abducted from his car in the eastern city of Lahore. The son’s fate remains unknown and militants are considered likely suspects in that abduction.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
RSS