News
Sunday, October 02, 2011
Taseer’s killer gets deathRAWALPINDI: An anti-terrorism court (ATC), on Saturday, awarded a two-time death sentence to Mumtaz Qadri, the self-confessed killer of former Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer.
The court announced in its verdict that no one could be given the licence to kill anyone in any condition, and therefore the killer cannot be pardoned as he had committed a heinous crime. “The court has awarded my client with death. The court announced the death sentence for him,” Shuja-ur-Rehman, one of Qadri’s lawyers, said. “The judge has also ordered him to pay a fine of 200,000 rupees,” the lawyer said. The defence said they would appeal against the verdict.
The case was heard by judge Pervez Ali Shah in Adiala Jail. Qadri has the right to appeal against the verdict in the high court within seven days. The convict, who was member of Taseer’s security detail comprising of Elite Force men, had said that he killed Taseer for his views on the country’s blasphemy law. He was arrested on the crime scene with the weapon. He confessed to the killing under oath.
During the in-camera hearing of the murder case, the ATC said that the murder, being a heinous crime, had no justification. Qadri, however, tried to justify his act by stating that he had killed him for supporting Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman convicted of blasphemy. Shah announced the verdict behind closed doors in the high-security Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi.
Whether Qadri will be hanged will remain open even after the appeals process is exhausted. According to Amnesty International, Pakistan has had an informal moratorium on executions in place since late 2008, before which it had hanged at least 36 people that year. Taseer’s killing was the most high-profile political assassination in Pakistan since former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was murdered in a gun and suicide attack on a Rawalpindi election rally in December 2007. agenciesCourtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk