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Chaos at hearing of alleged Pakistan assassin
AFP - 44 minutes ago
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RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AFP) - – Chaos engulfed a court hearing for the alleged assassin of a liberal Pakistani politician on Thursday 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.
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 Islamist 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 told AFP 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 told AFP, 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 Mohammed 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?"
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.
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.
Taseer refused to back off his calls to reform despite threats to his life and the PPP-led government saying it would not amend the legislation, in the face of a national strike.
He also called for clemency for a Christian woman sentenced to death under the legislation last November.
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