Around 10,000 people protesting the execution of Mumtaz
Qadri – a police officer who murdered the politician he had been
employed to protect – have clashed with riot police in Islamabad.
Local media is reporting that the crowd broke into the
city's "red zone", the high security area around its government hub, and
that police used tear gas to disperse protesters. The red zone, which
houses Pakistan's parliament building, is heavily fortified and
protected by hundreds of armed police and paramilitary soldiers.
Qadri, a former police commando from the Punjab region of
Pakistan, was hanged on 1 March for the assassination of the region's
governer Salman Taseer. Qadri, one of Taseer's bodyguards, shot him 27
times with an AK-47 assault rifle in broad daylight on 4 January 2011.
He said he killed Taseer because the politician had wanted to liberalise
Pakistan's controversial blasphemy law.
Following the murder, Qadri threw down his weapon and begged
to be arrested, and he subsequently enjoyed considerable support from
hardline clerics during his trial. He was eventually sentenced to death
at the country's anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi, Islamabad's twin
city.
Riot police carrying batons and shields attempted to
disperse crowds marking Qadri's sacrifice, while some reports suggest
security force vehicles were torched in the chaos. A bus station was
said to have been set ablaze, while an army colonel is believed to have
been injured by stones thrown by the crowd.
The protest is alleged to have been largely ignored by much
of Pakistan's media, which is believed to be subject to a
government-ordered blackout designed to prevent unrest from spreading.
Qadri, a Sunni Muslim, has become something of a martyr
figure for Pakistan's religious extremists, who are dead set against any
removal of the blasphemy law; some estimates suggest that more than
100,000 people attended his funeral, and unrest has grown in the country
since his death.
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