Islamabad
- Pakistan on Monday hanged the murderer of a governor who required reform of
the country's profanity law, officials and devotees told, saying Mumtaz Qadri famous
as a hero by Islamist supporters, had been hanged to death at a prison in Rawalpindi.
"I can confirm that Qadri was hanged in Adialia jail early
Monday morning," senior local police official Sajid Gondal told.
A prison official confirmed the fatality of Qadri, a former
police bodyguard who killed liberal Punjab governor Salman Taseer in 2011.
Around 50 Rangers and police in uprising gear as well as
ambulances and lots of police vehicles were posted outside Qadri's home in the
city early Monday, blocking the street and declining to allow people to enter.
Shouts were heard from inside the house as around 20 people gathered,
apparently family members, and mosques could be heard giving out news of the
execution.
He
said the hanging took place after a final meeting between Qadri and his family
late Sunday, and that the body had been sent to his relatives.
Qadri shot Taseer 28 times in broad daylight in an upscale market
in the capital Islamabad. He later self-confessed the killing, saying he
objected to the politician's calls to reform Pakistan's contentious profanity
laws.
Taseer
had also been vocal in his support of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who has been
on death row since 2010 after being found guilty of insulting the Prophet
Mohammed ï·º.
Qadri lost a request for the Supreme Court to review his
sentence in December last year. The decision came after the court warned in
October that in Islam a false charge can be as serious as the profanity itself,
and that calls for profanity law reform "ought not to be mistaken as a
call for doing away with that law".
Rumors started
pouring in earlier today as his supporters started Twitter trend to call for
protest against his expected hanging.
The protests have erupted in Hyderabad, Rawalpindi, Karachi and
Lahore after the announcement by leaders of the movement to free Mumtaz
Qadri.
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